As he noted, he can't afford Koni Yellows. Bilsteins look to be about the same price these days, so I doubt he'll be able to afford the Bilsteins.
Like the OP, I've heard that the Koni Orange (STR.T) units are the equivalent of Koni Yellows on full soft. Aside from experience, the only way to know if the Koni STR.T units will properly control the springs the OP has is by examining the spring rates of the springs and the damping rates of the dampers.
The only values I can find for the SR springs are 230 lb/in up front and 200 lb/in in the rear:
http://www.moddedmustangs.com/forum...owering-springs-really-worth.html#post4888919
I don' t know how accurate that is, but it's all I've got to work with. So, critical damping of 230 lb/in is about 50.5 lb/ips ("ips" is "inches per second"). The Koni Yellow rate up front at full soft is about 28.5 lb/ips, which for 230 lb/in is about 56% of critical. You'd presumably want 65% or so for truly proper control of the suspension, so 56% may be a bit soft.
HOWEVER: the advertising claims that these springs are progressive, so that 230 lb/in figure is incomplete, to say the least. It may be that the curve is such that you'd get good control over nearly everything but the last bit of spring compression, or it may be that most of the spring is near that rate, etc. Tough to say.
Strangely, based on the dyno plots, the lower-speed damping of the stock Brembo dampers would do a better job of controlling rebound of the SR springs than Koni STR.T dampers would. The problem with the stock Brembo dampers is that they look to me like they're underdamped in high speed rebound, and ride quality suffers as a result. And if they're underdamped in high speed rebound for the stock Brembo springs, they're
definitely going to be underdamped there for something firmer, and thus I wouldn't expect terribly good ride quality from them. Here's the dyno plots comparing the stock Brembo dampers against the Koni Sport dampers on full soft and full firm:
http://www.s197forum.com/forum/showpost.php?p=2240528&postcount=165
Stock Brembo dampers can be had for $82 each:
http://parts.autonationfordwhitebea...ont-suspension-cat/struts-and-components-scat (look for the "performance package" struts).
I don't know of any other reasonable option available to the OP, given his budget limitations. It looks to me like the STR.T dampers would be the way to go if ride quality is the primary goal, while the OEM "performance package" dampers would be the way to go if low speed rebound control is the primary goal. Given the OP's use, I suspect that ride quality would win, but it's a personal choice.
CammedS197, you may want to give Sam Strano (
http://www.stranoparts.com) a call on this. He may be able to steer you towards other, better options than either of those, given your budget. You'll just need to be clear on what your goals are. I'd normally also suggest a call to the guys at Vorshlag (
http://www.vorshlag.com), but I don't see anything in their inventory that is anywhere close to your budget here.