Improving harsh ride?
Hello all,
I recently bought a 2008 Winnebago Access 29t class C with the Ford E-450 chassis. The suspension appears to be all stock with only 21k miles on the coach. It handles acceptably concerning wind or semis passing by, turning is ok and it’s not wandering all over the road or driving poorly in those areas. Where it’s not so good is bumpy roads, rail road crossings, expansion joints, etc. It is jarring, slamming and extremely harsh in that area. I do understand that this is a 12K+ lb big truck with a heavy duty suspension, I owned a Dodge Ram 2500 4x4 quad cab diesel for almost 9 years so I get that heavy duty trucks are not going to ride soft, and I’m not expecting it to ride like an suv or anything, I was just wondering if there is any proven improvement to the slamming and jarring over the bumps. It sounds like it’s going to break something on some of the bumpier roads, I don’t know if it’s bottoming out or the suspension is so stiff in the back that its hardly even absorbing anything. I have done some searching and reading on here and read about the Koni FSD or Bilstien shocks, but I was wondering if some of the other suspension options like sumo springs, timbrens, air bags, etc. help any with the slamming. I did a lot of searching and could not find much info on those items concerning smoothing out the ride. My rig already has fairly thick front and rear sway bars, and I’m not sure how putting in a bigger, stiffer sway bar would help on the bumps, so I hadn’t really considered that. I have also read up on the tire pressure for actual weight and will experiment with that as soon as I can get the coach weighed on a cat scale.
Thanks in advance for any help, ideas, experience or information. If there really isn’t a reasonable way to improve the ride, that is ok too but I don’t want to be miss it if there is a readily available improvement.
(On a separate note, I had to post this using Woodall’s forum, could not get picky rvnet to accept anything)
I recently bought a 2008 Winnebago Access 29t class C with the Ford E-450 chassis. The suspension appears to be all stock with only 21k miles on the coach. It handles acceptably concerning wind or semis passing by, turning is ok and it’s not wandering all over the road or driving poorly in those areas. Where it’s not so good is bumpy roads, rail road crossings, expansion joints, etc. It is jarring, slamming and extremely harsh in that area. I do understand that this is a 12K+ lb big truck with a heavy duty suspension, I owned a Dodge Ram 2500 4x4 quad cab diesel for almost 9 years so I get that heavy duty trucks are not going to ride soft, and I’m not expecting it to ride like an suv or anything, I was just wondering if there is any proven improvement to the slamming and jarring over the bumps. It sounds like it’s going to break something on some of the bumpier roads, I don’t know if it’s bottoming out or the suspension is so stiff in the back that its hardly even absorbing anything. I have done some searching and reading on here and read about the Koni FSD or Bilstien shocks, but I was wondering if some of the other suspension options like sumo springs, timbrens, air bags, etc. help any with the slamming. I did a lot of searching and could not find much info on those items concerning smoothing out the ride. My rig already has fairly thick front and rear sway bars, and I’m not sure how putting in a bigger, stiffer sway bar would help on the bumps, so I hadn’t really considered that. I have also read up on the tire pressure for actual weight and will experiment with that as soon as I can get the coach weighed on a cat scale.
Thanks in advance for any help, ideas, experience or information. If there really isn’t a reasonable way to improve the ride, that is ok too but I don’t want to be miss it if there is a readily available improvement.
(On a separate note, I had to post this using Woodall’s forum, could not get picky rvnet to accept anything)
