Upgrade truck suspension

jimh425 wrote:
If the shocks made no difference, it sounds more like death wobble not porposing. That would mean your suspension parts could be worn, out of alignment, or stabilizer worn out or all. You can read about death wobble on Ford trucks at the Ford-trucks.com site.

The bandaid is adding a double shock steering stabilizer in addition to your stock one.

Porpoising is an out of balance issue. The front and rear are responding at dramatically different rates which cause the rocking. If you changed your shocks on the rear to 1 for example, you should see a different behavior. That being said, I ran 6 in front and 9 in back with my 9000s when I had a SRW, so those numbers are what I would expect.

If shocks were going to help, you should have already seen the benefit.

I did not say the Ranchos do not help. They do help, they just do not entirely eliminate the problem. The shock settings are so widely known, I think they would be regarded as the standard on TC with Rancho shocks. And changing the shock settings does dramatically impact feel.

The harmonic sets up on certain sections of highway with expansion joints. As I noted earlier, it is maddening when it happens but fortunately is very seldom.

As noted earlier, the variables involved in handling and suspension are great in number so what works for one often does not translate directly to another combo which I think is why the discussion has gone on so long in so many different forums.

If it were not such a pain, I would like to change out the front springs as I think the stiffness of the plow springs plays a part. Before installing the Ranchos the front was so stiff it was hard to tell the truck had front springs.

For my next step, I am going to leave the front shock setting at 6 and I am going to increase the engagement on the rear overloads and try dialing back the rear Ranchos settings. The beauty of the Ranchos is they make it possible to try a lot of different shock rates.

Thanks for the thoughts. :)

Steve