I am 2 weeks shy of having my F150 Bilstein 5100s on the front of my 2016 Expedition. I have them set on the 2nd ring giving me just at 2” of lift in the front. I had space between the coil spring and the inside of the control arm at all levels of articulation and rotation of the steering wheel.
Upon installation I had zero issues on road and the couple of times I did get to hit the trails.
Fast forward to about 2 weeks ago I started to get a clunk on big bumps and a pop under heavy turning.
Finally got a chance to crawl under today and yes the inside of the control arm is making contact with the spring. So I am guessing they have settled just a touch over the months to make slight contact.
Hard to get the phone up there for a good angle but trust me it is touching.
My guess this is why now that Bilstein has released 5100s for these Expeditions they are limited to 1.6” or 1.0” (can’t recall of the top of my head) of lift. They don’t want UCAs to be required for the install since at the time SPC was the only company marketing UCAs for lifted Expeditions. ICON has now entered the fold and we all know any F150 UCA will work (as long as back spacing and wheel offset is correct).
Luckily it is just a clunk on occasion and it is not actually binding.
So looks like new UCAs are going on sooner than I had planned.
BDS are not currently available on Amazon and $700 everywhere else I can find.
SPC are $600 and I get 5% cash back so $570.
$130 will buy me greasable endlinks and lower ball joints that I can toss on while I am doing the UCAs.
Maybe I can find a set of BDS on sale or used on the F150 forums.
While SPC gets a ton of praise on the Toyota forums the BDS looks to be a much beefier piece and the replacement ball joints are about half the price.
Upon installation I had zero issues on road and the couple of times I did get to hit the trails.
Fast forward to about 2 weeks ago I started to get a clunk on big bumps and a pop under heavy turning.
Finally got a chance to crawl under today and yes the inside of the control arm is making contact with the spring. So I am guessing they have settled just a touch over the months to make slight contact.
Hard to get the phone up there for a good angle but trust me it is touching.
My guess this is why now that Bilstein has released 5100s for these Expeditions they are limited to 1.6” or 1.0” (can’t recall of the top of my head) of lift. They don’t want UCAs to be required for the install since at the time SPC was the only company marketing UCAs for lifted Expeditions. ICON has now entered the fold and we all know any F150 UCA will work (as long as back spacing and wheel offset is correct).
Luckily it is just a clunk on occasion and it is not actually binding.
So looks like new UCAs are going on sooner than I had planned.
BDS are not currently available on Amazon and $700 everywhere else I can find.
SPC are $600 and I get 5% cash back so $570.
$130 will buy me greasable endlinks and lower ball joints that I can toss on while I am doing the UCAs.
Maybe I can find a set of BDS on sale or used on the F150 forums.
While SPC gets a ton of praise on the Toyota forums the BDS looks to be a much beefier piece and the replacement ball joints are about half the price.