Fancy Shocks on Trucks
 

I really like the Colorado, but the one thing that is not good is the ride quality on rough roads. The shocks are shit, and it's really starting to annoy me.

The cool kids seem to be buying custom valved external reservoir shocks from places like Accutune. I don't need a big lift or the ability to do high-speed baja-ing, but as you would expect, they claim the better shocks translate to better ride quality on rough roads as well.

It'll end up being like $2500 for the non-compression adjustable (in the truck world "adjustable" usually means height adjustable.) For $700 more you can get both high- and low-speed compression adjustments.

Rebound is never adjustable. Apparently trucks and cars are very different beasts. The folks at Accutune said that on trucks the focus is on keeping the wheel on the ground. Truck suspension has a lot of travel and you want the wheel to go down into the hole ASAP, then control it on the way up. You contain body roll using low-speed compression and sway bars instead. :dunno:

It's a lot of money so I'm not sure I'm going to do it. But I'm tempted.

That or trade it in on a new Ram Rebel. (Then in 6 months I can post asking about suspensions for my Ram :lol:)

For what it’s worth, $250 of Bilstein was magical on my truck. And then Sulastic ride shackles, which really soften up the leaf springs when empty.

What do the Sulastic ride shackles do? Create a small range of softer travel before the full spring rate kicks in?

Yes. The problem with leaf springs is that they are at their stiffest unloaded, so the sulastics add softness in the unloaded part of the spring travel.

They aren’t without trade offs - you get more axle wrap with them. Worth it, IMO. Would not be worth it if I always had 500-1000lbs. in the bed.

I put off-the-shelf Bilsteins on the Ram. They were transformative. It rides better unloaded than my old Chevy 2500 did with the trailer hooked up. I don't remember how much they were but I want to say on the order of $400. Sam actually had the cheapest pricing when shipping was included.

My experience with stiffer sway bars has been that they degrade the ride of pretty much every vehicle.

I was about to pull the trigger on the Sulastic shackles for the Chevy, but decided to replace the whole truck instead :)

You guys are kind of talking me into Eibach/Bilsteins...

Bilsteins 5100 are popular on 4-runners. More about making it easy to lift then ride quality though.

Well I couldn't talk myself into billsteins. I ordered the fox 2.5's w/ dual speed adjusters. They're custom valved by Accutune for my truck for mostly street use, but I'll be able to control the high and low speed compression up or down from there.

I can't explain how this makes any sense. But I wanted to see what they're like, so here we go.

Should be an improvement nonetheless

Something to look forward to. You’re probably in that truck a lot.