No question, KYB makes a good shock. My goals here are to try to get ride quality to OE-correct, however, within the limits of what is possible on replacement rear springs which contain Air Lift helper bags. The helpers are at 0psi but if the spring tries to compress, that obviously changes as they are not open to atmosphere.
I could certainly believe that Motorcraft has used multiple vendors. I found these shocks by looking at RockAuto to identify a currently catalog part number, and then looking on eBay for those numbers for both front and rear. For the front shocks, which were not priced particularly cheaply, the seller did agree to a 50% refund which made me feel a bit better. The rears were already ludicrously cheap and I won't be asking about it. Additionally, the front shocks were open box (box tab included but sent in different packaging) while the rears were sealed original boxes. The seller of the fronts should have recognized the oil leakage as a problem; the seller of the rears may legitimately have not known.
Not sure what's up with this brake business. It is possible there's a proportioning or front brake contribution issue. All plumbing on this one is still as it was when I got it, as well as old calipers, old rotors, just old stuff in general. It stops quite well, but if you told me the fronts aren't doing a whole lot, I'd maybe believe that. I have historically found that stock box brakes do seem to make the drums do a lot of work, so maybe if the fronts aren't biting much I'm doing most of my braking on the rears unless I really get into the pedal.
The hot brake smell is not every time it's driven, just sometimes, which makes it even weirder. Also, the noise is gone again. I dunno.
Tonight, I soldered in a replacement cornering lamp socket, and installed more of the AliExpress LEDs from China. Performing as desired.
I also swapped in a junkyard driver window switch, as the passenger window has a habit of only working up or down from that switch specifically, but not both in the same day, and the switch has to be really manhandled to work. Issue resolved.
Gearing up for a weekend camping trip. This will be the car for the trip. Thought about the wagon, but it doesn't have helper bags yet, and ground clearance with the hitch bike carrier is an issue.
Other discoveries of the evening include:
-The 3156 LEDs from the same seller as the 1156 I've come to love are not nearly as good. I put them in the reverse lights of the 83 and the Ranger (both had sockets swapped to 3156/3157 in the past), but honestly they kind of suck by comparison.
-The Ranger has a clutch hydraulic failure and the clutch will not disengage; the pedal went to the floor and stayed there. It's acting like it can't pressurize at all. Possibly using this opportunity to swap to the external slave arrangement if the problem turns out to be the slave cylinder. This will be a Fall project to be tackled in that vehicle's thread.