Question about rear shocks, and air bags?

[Sincoln]

I noticed the upper shocks seem to have some type of ball socket adapter? If looking at the shock outside of the car, the shock has this little adapter thing with a ball in the center? Is there anything specialized about this set up? Shocks are stupid expensive on Rock Auto, but their image looks like an everyday shock?

I remember my Mark VIII had expensive shocks as well. I ended up getting $20/each shocks for I think a 97' Thunderbird, and was able to cobble together a spacer + a washer and inverted one of the replacement rubber bushing washers (it was concave on one side) and that actually sat in the silver dollar sized hole going through the car. I put 15k miles on those and never had any issues with the air bags. Wondering if anyone has tried a similar approach with their Continental?

Also, what's involved with pulling the rear bags for replacement? Is it my understanding they just unclip out (after deflating and raising)?

 

[FlaOkie]

The rear air springs are the one job I did get done.
Twist and pull off the solenoid valve, and the rear air springs come out easy.
I replaced mine with coil springs.
I did it on a lift, it took a tad more than half an hour.

 

[Sincoln]

Very cool. I remember having a total failure of a bag 220 miles away from home once while away for work. That was a costly ordeal at the time.

Is there anything special with the shocks? It doesn't have the pre-set settings (think that's active suspension) on the cluster, other than power steering assist settings.

 

[Svets96]

Very cool. I remember having a total failure of a bag 220 miles away from home once while away for work. That was a costly ordeal at the time.

Is there anything special with the shocks? It doesn't have the pre-set settings (think that's active suspension) on the cluster, other than power steering assist settings.

I'm thinking the shocks you are referring to are for the front?....The OEM style active suspension, they only have 1 I believe, is the front passenger side. This is shown on the Rockauto website and Ford parts website. A lot of people are just getting the aftermarket style. They do not have the selection settings, I believe there are instructions on how to disable the message on the message center with the aftermarket shocks.

If not go to lincolnelites Facebook site where he shows you how to disable the system control: 1998 - 2002 Lincoln Continental DIY maintenance

There is TONS of valuable information on lincolnelites Facebook page. Read through, and I think you'll do very well on your own fixing your car. If I were you I'd pick up a used set of Continental Repair manuals on ebay or amazon in the model year car that you have.

 

[FlaOkie]

I’m not a facebook person, but I did find the front strut pics.
It wasn’t clear to me but, I assume Suncore furnishes the gold color resistor that fools the computer.

Strutmasters furnished a detailed description of wiring modifications to do away with the ride control error message when I replaced the air springs with their coils.
The wire modification removes the suspension computer in the trunk off the data bus, and re routes the 12VDC+ and – back to the power steering solenoid. A fairly easy modification, but I decided not to cut into the wiring – I just clear the message.
The car is a rolling crate of computers and wires, to me its best to just leave everything alone, unless absolutely necessary.

As for the factory service manuals ---if you are keeping an older car on the road it’s a must to have the factory manuals.
I have both the hard copies and the CD versions for both of my cars. Usually they are only a few bucks.

 

[Sincoln]

I don't have the handling settings for the air ride. The car manual says something about a user ID, which mine doesn't use. The "Vehicle Handling" button on the info cluster, only applies to power steering assist (wish it had the ride height adjustment).

I found some Suncore shock absorbers for a great price, and will probably go with those, though they took some searching to find. Was trying to verify the rear shocks weren't some goofy Ford 1-off like the Mark VIII got; my Mark had air bags but no adjustments unless you manually lowered/raised the sensor brackets under the car, and rear shocks were still over $130 each at the time vs. $20 each Thunderbird shocks (rear shocks). When I looked on RA, they listed a shock at a very high price and were out of anything else, so thought there might be an issue there i.e. something car specific, which doesn't seem to be the case. Thanks for the info guys!

BTW, the little 2 bolt plate (shaped like EGR gasket) with the eye socket in the center the rear shock upper strut bolt goes through before entering the car, does it have a name? If outside the car, look above the rear tire where the shock strut bolt enters the inner fender well. If like mine, it has some type of locator bracket the upper bolt from the shock goes through before entering the trunk area.