This is the progress of my partial suspension rebuild and lowering of my Monte. To start, I'm running Bilstein HD's paired with SSC lowering springs. My struts and mounts arrived about two weeks ago and have been sitting around waiting for me to decide on what lowering springs to go with. I finally ordered those last week and they should be here in two days. These are the struts right out of the box when I got them, fronts are middle picture and rears are bottom picture.

 

I decided to go ahead and do tear down today so that when my springs get here I can start assembly relatively quicker so I don't drag this out longer than it has to be. I got all four factory strut assemblies removed from the car and have the suspension supported from below while it’s sitting for now. I’m also painting the brake calipers and brackets black during this project. I got the rear calipers and brackets painted today and remounted the brackets snug for now. I hadn’t planned on doing that today, but during removal of the rear struts I had to remove the calipers and I figured I might as well do it then. That also led to me noticing that I have to buy new rear brake pads. The Ford dealership that I bought my car from obviously doesn’t know how to install brake pads on a GM product. Basically, the metal of the inner pad on the passenger side was bent which was causing the pad to wear on an angle (shown below). Anyway, here’s today’s progress…

The passenger rear before I removed anything.



And the front passenger before removal.









Here’s the problem with the brake pad from the passenger rear.



Doing the prep for caliper paint. I removed the caliper brackets and did the cleaning, prepping, and painting of those off the car. Went with the spray caliper paint this time instead of the brush on ceramic caliper paint. Have to say, I like the spray better.



After the caliper and bracket were painted with three coats of black. Visually, especially in person, it makes a huge difference.













Factory strut assemblies.

 

Looking Nice, Post some after pic's..

 

Nice, I have thought about lowering my pace car but beign it is a DD I would have to do what your doing and keep the stockers for winter use only,

 

If possible, could a moderator please move this thread to the "Tires & Rims & Suspension" section and delete my older thread, "Lowering my 7th Gen" (currently in that section)? Thanks!

 

Awesome cant wait to see the final result!

 

It looks like you've been busy, and the results so far look good. I don't want to make any extra work for you, but you may want to consider having the rotors resurfaced or at minimum use some sandpaper in a cross hatch pattern to remove the glaze. That way the new pads will break in properly. Otherwise the glaze will transfer from the rotors to the pads and could create braking problems (pulling/fading) and also shorten their service life.

 

Done

Looking good

 

Alright, thanks Mike!

I'll be posting pictures as I go so I'll be updating periodically during my progress and definitely for the final result when I'm finished. I'm not keeping the factory strut assemblies for any reason but I do need to remove the insulators and swap them over to the new setup.

 

Pure awesomeness!! you should paint your rotors and lower control arms black just to get rid of that surface rust lol
Can't wait to see progress and final result!!

Wish I had a monte that clean and new, I'd get the best stuff for it like you did. Unlike my monte and factory struts