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Focus Spring/Strut Replacement
(Also see footnote at the bottom of page)

Focus Spring Replacement

1. Open the hood and loosen the nut in the center of the strut tower (strut shaft). Don’t remove it all the way; just loosen it so that later removal will be easier after you compress the spring.
2. Loosen wheel lug nuts and place the front of the car on jack stands and remove the wheel and tire assembly.
3. Remove the brake line from the mounting bracket on the strut tower, it just slides out.
4. Remove the nut holding the sway bar to the strut then remove the strut end out of the bracket (you’ll need a 15mm wrench and a 5mm allen to hold the stud from turning).
5. Loosen the three nuts holding the top of the strut into the strut tower, don’t remove them completely yet. You just want to have some freedom of movement to help in getting the bottom of strut out of the control arm socket.
6. Remove the pinch bolt (completely) securing the bottom end of the strut into the pocket on the control arm, push down on the control arm assembly and forward out of the way, this may take some effort but it’ll come out (I just remove the pinch bolt then give the hub a downward stomp with my foot, works every time).
7. Remove the three nuts holding the strut assembly to the upper strut tower, be careful when you remove the last nut or the assembly may fall to the ground and squish your little toes.
8. Remove the strut assembly.
9. Install a set of spring compressors to the old springs and tighten them down just enough to put a little tension on the springs so that they won’t expand too much during the removal of the center (shaft) nut and cap assembly. There have been several reports of the removal being done without the use of spring compressors, but for safety, I’d recommend using them. (OK, I’m chicken).
10. Install your new springs onto the strut assembly. Be sure that the coil ends are securely seated in their pockets before you install the top spring cap.
you may not need a spring compressor if your installing lowering springs onto the stock struts, they are short enough that you can get the cap and nut on without a problem, having someone assist would help. But you may need them if your assembling an aftermarket lowering spring and strut kit, because the struts are shorter. Just run the center nut down enough to hold the assembly together, install the strut assembly onto the car, you can finish tightening the center nut after both struts have been re-installed. It’s easier to tighten them up once you have the weight of the car on them.

Now the Rear:

1. Loosen the wheel lug nut’s.
2. Jack up the car and place on jack stands and remove wheels.
3. Remove the nuts holding both ends of the sway bar and swing it out of the way (push it down and forward).
4. Place a floor jack under one of the control arms and raise the arm (compress the spring)
5. Remove the bolt securing the control arm to the spindle.
6. Slowly lower the control arm with the floor jack. Once the arm is completely free you should be able to wiggle the old spring out of it’s seat.
7. Remove the spring cushion from the top of your old spring and place it on to the new spring, be sure to use the spring cushion or your springs will make a hell of a noise.
8. Install the new spring making sure that you seat the spring ends into the pocket, then reverse the rest of the steps to complete the job.
9. Remove the trim from around the bottom of the rear hatch opening as well as both inner side panels. Once these are removed you will have access to the top of the rear shocks for removal, remove the nuts holding the top of the shock in place.
10. Remove the bolt holding the bottom of the shock to the control arm and remove the shock, reverse the order to install your new ones.

NOTE: When lowering the front control arm you may experience a problem with it not swinging down far enough to release the bottom of the strut. This didn’t happen on my car but it did on another guy’s car I did this replacement on.

If you run into this problem, crawl under the car and look at the inner end of the control arm (between the pivot points), you will see where it is making contact with the frame cross member. Get a drill (what I used was a dremmel roto tool) with a grinding disk and grind away a small amount of material from the end of the frame where it makes contact with the control arm. I had to remove about as much material as about the thickness of a credit card and it only took about 5 minutes per side. It’s amazing at how such a little amount of material removal equates to so much travel on the outer end of the control arm.

Another thing you may want to do. The bump stops for the front struts are located on the strut shaft under the dust cover. You can shorten them with a razor blade by cutting off one of the ripples (you’ll see what I mean).

There are two set’s of bump stops for the rear of the car, one set is located on the shock shaft dust cover, it actually snaps into the top of the cover. You can pull it out and cut off one of the ripples and re-install it before assembling the dust cover to your shock. The second set of bump stops are located on the control arm, these too can be trimmed with a razor blade. I cut off about half an inch from mine.

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