My '97 F-150 2WD all of a sudden seems to have started riding like a cheap Japanese car, with sort of a "bottoming out" feeling when hitting minor bumps in the road. Appears to only affect the right side. Handling seems fine. Truck has about 150k miles. Never had shocks replaced. Shocks? Bushings? Ball joints?

 

if their all original, probably all of those.

 

I agree.

 

OK, she's in the shop getting checked out. I was never able to get enough downward force to do a good bounce test but I did a hard stop today and got it to rock a few times so I'm pretty sure the shocks are toast. We'll see what else they find. While I was there I looked at some 2011 F-150s the sales guy was really pumping the one with the 6 cyl. engine and some kind of turbo boost.

 

That would be the ecoboost. And it's pretty sweet!

 

OK, turned out to be bad lower ball joints and upper control arms. I had them go ahead and replace the shocks too, although they apparently weren't much of a contributing factor.

Yep that ecoboost engine is starting to make a new 4x4 sound like a viable option.

 

Yeah, if I was done with school I would definitely be looking into getting one myself.