Your brother in law is correct. Grab your truck & rock it or push down real hard a bunch of times. When you let go, watch to see if it keeps rocking back and forth. It should stop after 2 or 3 bounces. If your truck, or car, bounces or rocks more than 3 times, you need new shocks. If your ride sucks, then it's time.

I have had cars go over 100,000 miles with OEM shocks from the factory. It all depends on how you drive, and the quality of the shock from the factory.

Keep in mind that you have a truck. If you are constantly towing or hauling heavy loads, your shocks will wear sooner.

I have a 1986 Samurai with over 300,000 that is still rolling on factory shocks. But my 1997 Explorer/Mountaineer with about 200,000 is about to get it's 3rd set of shocks.

 

Thanks, then what the heck are these guys doing, to replace there shocks after 40k?

 

Don't be worrying about what other people are doing.

I read on here that they changing their oil every 3,000 miles.
Some kind of cult, I figure.

 

It all depends on how you drive & the quality of the shocks that you have. If you are off road, rock crawling, towing, and hauling all the time, then your shocks will not last as long as those on a truck that does not see that kind of action.

 

As per Ford, severe driving conditions warrant you to change engine oil every 200 hours. I can see that. If you have a police car, taxi, or delivery vehicle where the motor stays on 10 or 12 hours a day. Just think: that is at least 20 hours of use for a car to barely go a few hundred miles. At freeway speeds of 60 miles per hour, those same 20 hours could equal 1,200 miles. Whether you run your car for 200 hours and drive 12,000 miles on the freeway, or just idle while you eat donuts for 200 hours and only drive 2,000; it's time to change the oil.

Imagine that? Having to change the oil every 2 weeks!

 

I do some months in the summer, I'll put on 6000 miles in 2 weeks, so I get an oil change every two weeks. There is also other fun stuff like needing new tires every 1.5 years. Good thing I get payed mileage for work.

 

Maybe on my Superduty... But no way in hell on an IFS F-150...

 

71K and my drivers front blew out. Looking to replace ASAP.

 

The rears area a piece of cake. The fronts - which are coil overs - are not something you'd want to do by yourself. I actually got the best price from my dealer ($115 labor only) to put mine in. Several other shops wanted up to $200 for the installation. You can tell by those rates that this is not an easy job.

 

If you are skilled enough to put a coil spring spacer in like a Daystar, you can replace your front shocks. It's really not that hard. Lift the front end up, remove the wheel, pop the knuckle, and sway bar links free, unbolt the coilver assembly, remove, attach and tighten spring compressor to coil spring, unbolt and remove shock assembly, reverse process, take to get it aligned...

With the cost of alignments around here, if I could get the fronts done with alignment for $200.00 I would be happy... A cheap alignment around here is $100.00 these days...

 

[QUOTE=dbhost]If you are skilled enough to put a coil spring spacer in like a Daystar, you can replace your front shocks. QUOTE]

I won't disagree there, but the Spring Compressor part is where you've got to be real carefull. I recently saw the aftermath of a Spring Compressor used incorrectly that got away. Let's just say this guy doesn't have to think nearly as hard to throw somebody the bird now. (Yea, 3 fingers gone!)

 

My cousin lost some teeth trying to fix some springs one time. This was on a dump truck, though.

 

Ouch!

 

It's a mental thing. It's like Viagra, if you spend the money and think it helps. It does.

 

I just changed my rears yesterday at 50K miles. Got the ranchos for ~100. I "seems" to ride a lot better