Ok, so hopefully this helps someone in the future. Here's the final view:
These things are weird with height settings. When I started out, I measured the rake, and the rear was 1.25" taller than the front. There was a very visible rake (that any stock Expedition should show).
I had to do the work in two stages - front first, then rear. I set the fronts at max lift (1.6"), and when the work was done, the rear was 0.5" lower than the front. This math roughly checks - it would account for 1.75" of lift. A little extra, but not unreasonable.
So, I set my rears to the 1.1" setting, hoping to end up with the rear about 0.5" - 0.75" higher than the front. That's not at all what happened. After installing the rears at 1.1" of lift, I was still about 0.125" - 0.25" lower in the rear. How on earth adding what should be 1.1" of lift gained less than 0.5" I cannot understand, especially in the rear where there is less weight. I'd hope Bilstein could measure properly for their shock, but if they were to be off, I'd expect the front to over-compress, not the rears. Here's how that setup looked:
Much to my dismay, I took it all apart again and put them at max height on the rear as well (1.5"). In the end, the rear is now 0.125" - 0.25" higher than the front.
I'm not super happy about the over-representation of lift on the front and the absolute meager lift on the rear. If I had more patience and time, I'd consider dropping the fronts down to the 0.8" setting to get some rake back. I'm also considering a 0.5" spacer for the rear on top of the coilover just so I don't have to re-compress the springs again. Not sure where I'll end up yet. I'm trying to get some meat on the wheels, so I'll probably skip lowering it just to ensure the tires fit.
Here's some shots of all four corners:
The ride is decent. It is certainly more controlled, and I wouldn't say overly stiff. I do have some noise coming through on bumps, which is how I arrived at these shocks to begin with. It sounded like I had a leaky shock before I started, so I figured if I was gonna do a lift, I might as well replace the shocks at the same time. The noise persists. I had a fleet mechanic friend go over the entire suspension on a lift, and he was satisfied that everything is tight and in place. Discount Tire didn't seem to have any concerns when doing the alignment either. The current operating theory is that it is tire noise (the stock Pirellis are hot garbage shit). I suppose I'll find out pretty quick once I put new tires on it. So, I'm not very happy with the wildly inaccurate measurements from Bilstein, but I am overall happy with the shocks and lift itself.
