I need to replace the front shock mounts on my 2000 xk8. My ride height is off an inch and the shock tower is covered in decomposed red rubber. I have the choice of the OEM rubber or the Poly mounts from Welsh. I am leaning towards the poly but I have a concern on harsh ride and possible front end break issues.

If you have run the poly mounts I would appreciate hearing your opinion.

 

FWIW, I have heard nothing but good things about the Welsh mounts. Nobody complained about a significant change in the ride. OTOH, there are many stories of folks buying the stock mounts and, over time, doing the job more than once. There are even pictures of after-market MELTED mounts. Yes, MELTED.

That job is in my future, and I will get the Welsh mounts. There were great sales on these on eBay, but it is over I believe...

 

I guess you could start here.

 

I replaced my upper mounts 4 years ago using oem mounts. Guess what, I am getting ready to do the job again as they have started to deteriorate. Bought a set of Welsh poly and will go that route.

 

I put in the Welsh posts and the ride is the same. They look like they are superior as well over the oem one's. I definitely raised the front and much of the scraping is gone on inclines.

 

+1

I replaced mine with standard mounts and after ~3 years they were beginning to crumble again. My blue cat has been sold, but another top mount replacement was clearly in its future.

Get the poly. FWIW, I had all poly street bushings on the remaining front suspension and the ride was excellent. Not too firm and felt better overall.

 

David - before replacing the upper mounts - highly recommend (and voice of experience here) checking lower shock bushing, shock condition and at least upper A-Arm bushings. Replace as much at once instead of doing like I did - upper mounts, then new oem A-arm bushings, then lowering springs/new shocks - then new powerflex poly a-arm bushings and now going in for poly upper bushings.


I will say, I've gotten good at removing and can have both sides out in an hour but that is more time I could have spent driving!!!!!

 

I'm going to have to go back in to do more as well but it's not that big of a deal. I will never do the spring compressor thing again though. They will go to the shop when it's shock time. I only did one with the advance auto borrowed compressor...never again. I got a guy to do the other one for like $30.00...

 

David -
I installed the Welsh mounts to replace my crumbling OEM mounts. I also found I needed to replace the lower shock mounts and the shock bumpers which had deteriorated to the point of almost not being there. So take care of those too. While I was in there I also installed the new A-arm poly bushings. The handling is great now with no scraping on even the bumpiest roads

If your going to do this yourself I would suggest you get the "bear trap" spring compressor. I was not able to get the spring compressed as far as needed with the usual screw type compressors because the thickness of the cast hooks on the set I had did not allow the spring to be compressed far enough. The bear trap has strong but thinner hooks to grab the spring so you can compress it further.

 

Wayne (cjd777) and I installed the Welsh polyurethane front shock mount kits (along with new front shocks and shock bumpers) in my wife's daily-driver 2006 XK8 back in January 2016. Still very happy with them overall. They can sometimes be a little squeaky when first starting out on a 10-degree winter morning, but once they warm up a bit they quiet back down. We used plenty of lube during installation but that is the nature of polyurethane in very cold weather. Squeaky mounts on maybe a dozen days per year during the first five miles or so is a small price to pay for what should turn out to be much longer-lasting materials....

 

What kind of spring compressors did you use Jon?

 

We used two different pairs of the standard bolt-type ones. It was indeed a pain to position them as necessary to be able to crank them down enough to remove the assembly. The thinner your spring compressor hooks are, the easier the job becomes, and you want the bolts short but not too short. I know we fooled around with positioning them for at least 30 minutes on the first side before we finally figured out exactly where they needed to be. And if I remember correctly, Wayne actually cut one pair of the bolts shorter to make them easier to fit where we needed them to be....