Hey, guys.
Adam here with americanmuscle.com.
And today we're taking a closer look at and installing the SR Performance Rear Shock available
for all 2005 to 2014 Mustangs.
You should be checking this out if you're in need of a replacement at the rear end for
your factory shocks because we all know after a while they start to get worn out and blow
out.
If that's your case or you're really unsure, your rear shocks will start to tell you that
they're in need of replacement if you're getting excessive squatting upon launches or excessive
squatting upon taking off from a red light.
You'll also know it's starting to go if you're having a really uncomfortable ride at the
rear end on some of that rougher terrain or even on smooth pavement, it might be a good
time to swap them out.
Now if you're looking for a replacement, why not go with an upgrade, right?
We all want a little bit more performance-savvy products, we all want a little bit better
handling and the SR Performance shock here does all that but on a nice tight budget.
This one here comes in only around 50 bucks and I will say they are sold individually,
so if you're looking to replace the whole rear end, it's gonna be a 100 bucks total,
you want to pick them up separately.
Now these replacing your factory shocks is definitely gonna be that upgrade in the stiffness
and sporty department.
You're gonna get better cornering abilities, you're also gonna get slightly better handling.
It's just all around gonna be a nice comfortable ride for a daily driver but still gonna give
a little bit more of a sporty performance feel to them.
This has a twin-tube gas-pressurized design, it's finished in a nice gloss black finish
as opposed to your factory mat black.
We'll take a closer look at them side by side later on although appearance-wise there isn't
too much of a difference aside from the gloss black and the SR Performance sticker.
I will say attached to that is going to be your poly bushing on the bottom, you're also
gonna get two separate bushings, two separate washers and a nylon lock nut for the top.
Of course, a bushing and washer will be under the vehicle and a bushing and washer, as well
as the nut, will be in the trunk.
Now this guy here does come with the dust shield, you don't have to worry about taking
off your old one and swapping it over.
Everything is good to go right out of the box, you'll just be reusing your factory bottom
shock bolt.
Now as far as this process, you are gonna have to lower your rear sway bar, it's very,
very simple.
Two bolts are gonna be holding on the top sway bar end links.
We're gonna unbolt those, pull it down, and it'll give you access to that bottom shock
bolt.
We'll start things off in the trunk and I'm gonna walk you through every single step of
the process here.
I'm giving it one out of three wrenches on our difficulty meter.
Anybody can tackle it in the driveway at home, no real modifications necessary, it's a simple
bolt-on install.
Now if you're looking to do this, you want to have simple hand tools on deck, you are
gonna need a torque wrench to make sure you're torquing down those bolts properly.
It also might be helpful to have a breaker bar on deck because they tend to be pretty
tight.
I'm gonna walk you through the process, what do you say we get started?
We got our 2014 on the lift, let's get to it.
Tools used in this install include an impact gun, 13-millimeter deep socket, 15-millimeter
short and deep socket, 18-millimeter deep socket, dead blow hammer, panel removal tool,
torque wrench, 15-millimeter ratcheting wrench, a regular 15 wrench works as well or a ratchet
and a 15 socket and a breaker bar.
All right, first up here, guys, you got to pop open your trunk because we do have to
disconnect the shock from the inside of the trunk.
So once you pop that open we have to remove this entire trim panel back by your trunk
latch, top left and top right, there's these little twist clips.
What you're basically gonna do is just finger-twist that guy off and it comes straight back.
Now do the same thing on the other side.
Now there's two push pin clips right underneath of that in this little indent, there's one
here and there's one on the other side, grab a panel tool and pull it off.
All right, so on our left side I got my panel removal tool, this isn't required but I think
it makes life a little easier, just pry up underneath and pull back.
All right, so we got that a little bit disconnected here, pull straight back.
Same thing on the other side.
All right, now on our carpet, there's a couple of those push pin clips here, one on this
side, one on that side.
We don't have one on our left side, so just grab them both off using that panel tool again
and then we can lift this trim panel off.
All right, so at this point, we can remove this entire trim panel on the back here where
our trunk latch is.
Grab from both sides or from the center, pull up and remove it from the vehicle.
Now keep in mind, guys, on the back of this, you may have a little trunk light.
If you do, you're gonna want to pinch and disconnect that harness.
All right, so now the top of our shock is all the way in the back behind this liner,
so we have to pull that back.
We don't necessarily have to remove it, we just need to pull it back enough to expose
the top shock nut.
There's one more push pin clip here, this little Christmas tree clip, and then on top
of that, there's a bolt we have to remove and then we can peel it back.
So grab that panel tool and just pull this push pin off.
And if you're doing the shocks on both sides of your Mustang, of course, you just want
to repeat this on the other side.
But just for the video purposes, we're gonna be showing you this driver side.
All right, so now we can grab our socket and get this bolt off.
Grab a 13 socket and remove this bolt.
All right, so I like to put it down here.
Once that's taken care of, we can start removing this liner, pull that guy back.
So once you have that out of the way, you're exposing the top of your shock.
Now what you're gonna do is grab a 15-millimeter deep socket and remove this nut.
The nut and this spacer here are all in one piece, so they'll come off together.
So we got that off and you can see here it's the spacer, nut, and bushing all in one piece.
And here you can see the shock comes through this stud.
As we put the car in the air, this will start to disconnect and lower down.
And all we have left is the one shock bolt underneath the vehicle, so let's get the car
up in the air.
All right, so we got our vehicle up in the air and as you can see we're of course using
a lift.
If you're working on the ground, you want to position your hydraulic jack under the
rear differential or the pumpkin and jack it up from there, it'll make life a lot easier
and I'll explain why in just a second.
Really what we're gonna do at this point is unbolt the bottom of our shock.
Now the shock bolt is tucked in here but our sway bar is blocking the path to that bolt.
The bolt wouldn't back all the way out because the sway bar is in the way.
So because of that, we have to unbolt our sway bar links which are up here.
We'll have to do both sides, this side and our passenger, and from there we can swing
our sway bar down out of the way, unbolt our shock, swap it out, and then bolt our sway
bar back up.
Now it sounds like a lot of extra steps but they're necessary in order to get that shock
bolt out safely.
What we're gonna do now is support our rear diff with a pole jack because we're on a lift.
Like I said, if you're on the ground, you can just put your hydraulic jack or what you're
using right under that differential and that'll be sufficient.
Because we're in the air on a lift I'm gonna grab a pole jack.
All right, so really we're just supporting that, I'm gonna put a little bit more pressure
on it.
So now that we have that supported I'm gonna unbolt our sway bar.
All right, so I'm gonna use a long 15-millimeter ratcheting wrench, you can use just a simple
ratchet and socket if you'd like.
We're gonna work this guy off.
All right, so once you get that bolt out, the end link here is gonna dislodge.
Can do the same thing on the other side.
All right, with those two bolts out of the way, the sway bar can swing down and give
us room to get this bolt out.
All right, so now we can take a 15-millimeter socket and remove this bolt.
Now keep in mind, guys, since we didn't take our wheel off, this nut here may fall and
hit the wheel barrel.
We don't really want to scratch our wheel, so put your hand in there if you are keeping
your wheel in place just to make sure that the nut doesn't fall down.
All right, so we got the nut, really just pulling out that bolt and bringing down our
shock.
So we got our factory shock off of our '14 GT and in my left hand here is our SR Performance
rear shock.
Want to take you through some of the similarities and differences here, and obviously this isn't
an appearance part but just to talk about the appearance of the two really quickly.
The factory shock is black, has that dust shield on it, it's pretty dull, it's more
of a matte black, this is a bit glossier and I also think it's a bit girthier or as well.
I know I can hear the YouTube comments already.
This guy is a little bit thicker, it's gonna have a little bit more of a sporty suspension
feel, a little bit stiffer if you will.
This guy here has that same twin-tube gas-pressurized design.
It's gonna fit exactly the same and as you can see it's already got pretty much the same
exact bushing on the bottom.
The bushing I think does have a little bit of a higher quality, the polyurethane bushing
there with the SR Performance one, it won't wear out as quickly as your factory stuff
would.
Now what I want to talk about is the top here, I'm gonna put the factory guy down.
Looking at our new SR Performance shock, you have a little bit of a different system up
here.
What we do have is a nylon lock nut on the top, a flat washer or spacer here, spacer's
curved at the top, flat on the bottom.
We'll take a look at the details of why that matters just a little bit.
We've also got two individual bushings and then another spacer on the bottom.
What do you want to basically do is take off the bushing, spacer and nut that I just took
off and just remain with this.
All right, so there's a spacer on the bottom, flat side facing up, and then the bushing
here with that notch facing up.
So at this point, we're ready to install our shock.
Basically doing everything in the reverse order, we're gonna use the factory bolts here
at the bottom but keep in mind you have all that new hardware on the top.
All right, when it comes time to install your shock, you want to make sure you're putting
the stud through the hole in the vehicle, back up into the trunk, and then line up the
bottom.
All right, so we're just feeding that guy into place and then lining up this bottom
portion.
For the bottom, I'm gonna put this factory bolt right back through going the same direction.
And from there take that nut, feed it through, and again, I know it's tough to see, we still
have our wheel on, but I'm just gonna thread this guy in by hand a couple of threads.
We're gonna grab our 15 socket and tighten that down.
All right, so at this point, you want to grab a torque wrench and torque down that bolt
to about 85 foot-pounds.
Perfect.
What we're gonna do now is swing our sway bar up into place.
All right, so getting our sway bar up into place, again, you want to make sure both sides
are being aligned properly.
This side wasn't going up far enough, so what we're doing is using a pole jack, and we just
push it up to align the holes.
Grab your factory bolt and put that guy through.
Of course, grab the nut, the factory nut, you're gonna thread this guy in.
I'm gonna thread it all the way in by hand, and then we're gonna finish it off with our
ratcheting wrench.
Once you have that nice and snug, repeat for the other side, and then we'll torque them
both down.
All right, now again, this guy is just gonna be 85 foot-pounds, so I got my torque wrench
here, torque it down.
All right, so we're pretty much done underneath the car, let's get our pole jack out of the
way, or again, if you're on the ground, get your hydraulic jack out of the way, let's
put our car back on the ground, tighten it up from in the trunk.
All right, now that we're in the trunk, you see the new stud coming through at the top
of our shock, I'm gonna put our bushing on.
The new bushing in the kit, we're gonna put our flat washer on.
And then finally the 18-millimeter nylon lock nut.
Grab your deep 18 socket and tighten that down.
All right, now we can grab our 15 bolt, put it through up top, grab our 15-millimeter
socket and tighten it down.
All right, so now it's our back panel trim by our trunk latch off.
Now if you remember, ours had this light, we're gonna plug that guy back in.
And then you want to make sure these two bottom feet of that trim have to go underneath of
this floorboard.
Just gonna lightly pick up on that guy, slide her under.
There was one push pin clip here, so I'm gonna put that guy back in and that's gonna retain
that.
Now we can work on the trim panel here.
We have a Christmas tree clip at the bottom on both sides.
And then finally, these little plastic retainer clips at the top.
All right now these thread on, so I'm just gonna pop it onto the stud and then give it
a twist, tighten her down.
Same thing on the other side.
All right, guys, when that last thing is in place, you're good to go.
Well, guys, that's gonna wrap up my review and install for the SR Performance Rear Shock
available for all '05 to '14 Mustangs.
You can pick up your SR Performance shock exclusively right here at americanmuscle.com.