I've had my BAT European handling kit on my '95 SE for 2 years, and I just got off the phone with Ford to order a full stock replacement to get back to the wonderful handling car I once had. The BAT kit is garbage! Here's my experience:
1) unbalanced front-to-read: This has caused my hair to stand on end more than once
2) Floats in transitions: It made my agile SE into a run-of-the-mill econo-sedan. I've totally lost confidence in the car and have had to retreat to more conservative driving - dropping the fun-to-drive quotient down to average
3) Low, lower, and lower still... After 2 years the springs are sagging noticably in the front!!! I can see more and more of the individual coils compressing to rest on one another!
4) Impossible to align properly - 3 alignments, experimenting with various settings to fix the problem as recommended by BAT - result: $79.99 x 3....
5) The kicker - on the weekend I went to change over to my winters, and to my delight I found my 3 month old Bridgestone S-03s bald on the inside! That's $500 worth of tire in one summer. Of course it's because I'm riding around on a bottomed out front-end. Oh, and btw, that's the second set of tires I've gone through trying to get the responsiveness back into my car, plus I returned a third on a 30day money back because I didn't suspect the suspension at first (Sorry Bridgestone - I guess I didn't need the S-03s after all).
DO NOT BUY THIS KIT!!!!!!
Because I'm a fair guy, I'll give the positives: Lower car looks better, and with BAT, it gets lower each year, so I guess it looks better each year too. Also, the kit does soak up bumps better than stock, but at the cost of handling and responsiveness. It cruises nice at highway speed, but I was afraid of offramps.
But, next week my stock SE kit will be in and I'll be back in true form for spring when I get my S-03s (+ 2 new ones) back on.
Anyone want to pay shipping on a full 2-year old BAT kit???
