Ride Quality

RV dealers don't generally work on power train and suspension, brakes, etc. You need to find a dealer who sells your brand of truck line and has facilities for RV work. For non-warranty work, a truck shop may be cheaper. Some work can be done without a lift by a qualified auto/truck mechanic.

Just about any shop can replace shocks on a motorhome. You can do it yourself too, it's not hard and doesn't require any special tools.

Where can I find someone in Oklahoma City area that will replace the shocks on my class c for a reasonable price...or will anyone at all do it. Everywhere I have called said they don't do anything on the chassis. Does that mean it will be hard to get any real maintenance done on the chassis, like maybe a water pump or something else minor. It seems like if you buy a new one the RV dealer will work on the home part, but not the chassis. Ford says they don't. A friend had a minor problem with his cummins diesel motorhome and the estimate to fix it was $27,000, but it turned out all it needed as new fuel filters.

Desert Captain wrote:
Running with a medium to heavy load the coach actually rides far better then it ever did before. Wind and trucks were never an issue that remains the case. Two finger steering is the rule
and that continues up through 35 mph winds... anything above 35 and I simple choose to get off the road. Keep in mind I have weighed the coach, several times, and inflate my Michelin LTX M/S 2's according to the load I am currently running as even great shocks {Bilsteins, Koni's, Monroe's etc.,}s are worthless without the proper inflation.

FWIW, I may be an early adopter in these here parts, but I now have 6 Michelin LTX M/S Defender LRE tires on our rig. Michelin is replacing the LTX M/X 2 with the new Defender line. I'm not sure about the M/S2, but the Defender tread area has 6 plies.

PS: Inflating the rear tires per whatever your rear load is a very wise way to take some of the sting out of the E Series leaf springs, but I run with 80lbs. in the rears to keep heat generation in the sidewalls at a minimum, to provide the strongest possible lateral stiffness, and to help out gas mileage just a bit.

One thing Desert Captain and I fully agree on: if you upgrade and use Bilsteins, go with the HD model. Also inflate to weight.

Nothing subtle about the improvement we enjoy after installing a new set of Bilsteins to our 2012 E-350. After 33,000 miles the original equipment shocks were tired {too say the least -pretty well shot to say the most}.

After speaking to the folks at Bilstein and Shock Warehouse I elected to go with their "heavy duty" model. Their standard model is for large SUV's and our 24' C is a lot more truck than any SUV. This decision was based upon a number of factors. Our GVWR is 11,500# and we usually run very near that number.

We often tow my motorcycle {675# Harley Dyna Super Glide}, on a small trailer ({200#}, which puts us even nearer our GVWR. I could not believe ride and handling after installing the Bilsteins, so much better. I watched two very large mechanics wrestle with compressing the shocks during the install, the rears were not a problem but the fronts were a serious PITA! {soo glad I did not try and do this myself!}. These shocks are on the firm side of the equation but given the load they support I would not want anything less.

Running with a medium to heavy load the coach actually rides far better then it ever did before. Wind and trucks were never an issue that remains the case. Two finger steering is the rule
and that continues up through 35 mph winds... anything above 35 and I simple choose to get off the road. Keep in mind I have weighed the coach, several times, and inflate my Michelin LTX M/S 2's according to the load I am currently running as even great shocks {Bilsteins, Koni's, Monroe's etc.,}s are worthless without the proper inflation.

Works for me!

:B

I think the last few posts may be based on just what we consider "ride." Probably all of it legitimately can be. There is no doubt in my mind the Koni improved the rocking motions, and the larger unpleasant motions which made the E series feel like it was flopping along on it's suspension. But like pauldub, I think the huge multi leaf packs have a lot of internal friction, and transmit jolts just fine all on their own, and the tires don't help either. While I haven't tried it, I suspect removing the shocks entirely would still allow some of these so called high frequency impacts to come through. The shocks can theoretically help with the high frequency jolts (the part that actually comes through the shock)..and they very well may. It's just that my butt detector isn't sensitive enough to cleanly pick out the improvement. Instruments under controlled conditions could tell a story. From what I read here, with my "little improvement", pauldub "any improvement", and quite a few others mentioning improvement-I think there is some improvement. But the springs themselves are huge culprits. There's a reason multi leaf packs are not typically used in cars...starting in the 1950s and possibly before. Coils simply transmit less harshness. So do torsion bars and single leaf springs. Multi leaf packs are great for beasts of burden like our E series.

The improvement in ride after installing Koni FSD shocks in the rear of our 24 foot Class C is subtle:

A) For instance, the accordian shower door clip (our shower is way in the rear where the ride was the worst) that keeps the door closed used to always jump out of position with the stock Ford shocks in the rear. Now it never does.

B) Also, the extreme side-to-side tipping when exiting parking lots if slightly catching the curb with one of the rear tires is now just a controlled rolling action instead of a violent jerking action.

The above two affects demonstrate both the high frequency -as in our example A), and the low frequency - as in our example B), variable damping response of the Koni FSD technology. A shock with only a single rate of damping - no matter how clever and high quality it's design is - cannot act with the two different damping responses that are required in these two different situations.

Unlike the other posters, I've been rather disappointed with the Koni FSD shocks. I put them on the rear of my 24' motor home and I really don't think they provided any improvement over my OEM shocks with 80,000 miles on them. The leaf springs are simply not very compliant.

We have a 24 foot 11,800 lb. Class C on an E450 chassis and run 80lbs. of pressure in the rear Michelin tires.

Like (or worse than) the OP, the pounding in the rear of our rig on an under-loaded chassis from highway potholes and cracks was horrendous - especially in places like the truck lane of I80 in the High Sierras where tire chains, freezing/unfreezing, and big-rig vehicle weight in the winter combine to really ruin concrete.

I waited way too long to replace the stock rear Ford shocks with a variable rate rear shock. These Koni FSD shocks have really added to reduction of the pounding in the rear of our Class C:

http://www.konirv.com/FSD.cfm