I just finished up installing Rancho Quicklift on the front and 9000xl shocks on my 2005 FX4 tongiht. I was stocked to take it out and completely dissappointed when I felt like I was driving on ICE the whole ride.

I tried changing the adjustment these shocks have (turned them all the way up to 9 and then tried turning all the way the other way to make sure I didn't have it backwards), but it helped very little. It is so soft that it doesnt' feel safe to drive. The back end is like a spring board when you bounce it (no load).

So is this normal and I'm just used to the old bad shocks? Did I do something wrong on the install (It's basically just 2 bolts unless I'm missing something). Is something else shot (leaf springs?). Or did I get dead on arrival shocks?

Thanks for your help!!!! I also emailed Rancho, but I'm expected better help from this forum. Its the best!

FYI, I'm no expert but if anyone has questions about the install on the quicklift, feel free to ask I can at least allude to what I ran into personally.

 

If your leaf springs are done, that truck must have been through one hell of a 5 year life. With new shocks, the vehicle should have a stiffer ride if the old shocks were shot, unless you got extremely over-rated shocks. It sounds to me like you got shocks that were never pressurized if I am understanding what you are describing, or at least extremely under-pressurized.

 

That is kind of what I thought about the leaf springs, but I"m a newb so thought I would throw that out there. I'm gonna put the old ones back on tonight, and call call Rancho for a replacement tonight. The ride to work this morning was just aweful (and little scary on some bumps).

 

I for one don't get it. I have those shocks and they are the best shocks I've ever had. The odds of you receiving 4 bad (non-pressurized shocks) is pretty darn remote. When off the truck, where they strapped compressed? Did they extend on their own? Then they should be charged and good. Although not exact, you should be able to feel a difference with each click when trying to compress the shock (off the truck) by hand. Another indicator of possibly a problem with the shock, but not a guarantee. I also don't fully understand what you meant by riding on ice? You didn't mention mileage, but at 5 years of service, it's highly unlikely you have a spring and/or truck problem.

Did you try any intermediate settings on the shocks or did you just try full hard and full soft? That could be a mistake there as well. I know on my truck at least, one of the things I really enjoyed about the 9000's was that each click made a difference.

Also, you don't have to, nor should you, match the settings front to rear. You need to experiment with different setting front to rear to find out what you like and what works best for your truck. A 7 on the front may work out great but be entirely too stiff for the rear of an empty truck. For example, my every day settings are 7 (or 8...I forgot) on the front, and 2 in the rear. This seems drastic, but it provides the firm ride that I like and the truck feels extremely balanced front to rear. If I go much higher than 3 on the rear, you get into that "too stiff" for comfort I was talking about. I can also back mine down to a 1 in the rear and 4-5 in the front for a nice plush-er (well, as plush as you can get on these trucks anyways) ride, but at no time have I ever felt dangerous.

I think you are jumping the gun a little prematurely on this and not giving these shocks their fair shake. This is a quality item you just need (or at least it sounds like) to learn to work with. You've practically got a custom valved set of shocks there...slow down and take advantage of it.

FWIW, I had a problem with my shocks (completely unrelated and irrelevant to this thread) and tried contacting Rancho via e-mail and their web site. Both completely useless and yielded zero results. I called the tech department and got a person, but he wasn't much better. I ended up dealing with it on my own and then wrote a letter the old fashioned way to the company...never heard anything about it. Love their products but disappointed in the customer service. My point...if you need tech help, call.

 

Thanks for the info Galaxy. The mileage on the truck is 76000. I think the issue is only with the rear shocks, the front seem to be performing great (at least according to the bounce test). I checked it this morning, and front returned to level with no bounce hardly at all, the rear however bounced 3-4 times before they leveled off, its like a diving board. The ice feeling I'm talking about... I guess I should say fishtailing horribly to more accurately describe it.

The shocks were compressed when they arrived, I did a quarter turn to release them, they extended out. I'll try your test tonight to change the setting and compress them to see if they are harder to compress (or lighter) at different settings. I did try a 5 setting on them also, and to honest I didn't notice that big a difference for any settings driving wise.

Yeah, I had a set of Rancho's on my Blazer back in the day, and liked them alot. That is why I went with them over the Bielsteins, I'm hoping I did something stupid (I just can't think of anything yet), or if they're bad they replace them like they should. Thanks for the advice on calling them as well, I'll be doing that tonight hopefully if I have time. Also good to know about the different settings front to back, I didn't know it was advisable to do that but makes sense.

On a side note (probably should have mentioned this sooner), one of the front springs was actually broken all the way through. I didn't notice until I went to replace shock. The break was at the bottom of the spring (last turn before the bottom), so it didn't move it much, just gave it a a little bend over all. I don't do really any off road at all on this, so makes me nervous the the previous owner did to it, I bought it with 25k on it.

Just paid it off last month, so here come the issue :-)

 

So it looks like they are fixed!!! It took them off last night and got to thinking that maybe I might have put them on upside down. I couldn't imagine that that would cause such a big issue, but I was out of ideas. While I had them off though, I was testing compressing them, the they were moving pretty freely now matter what setting I set them too. But I after I fully compressed them a few times, bam, they slowed down and stiffened up. I did the same for the other side, and now they are working great! Looking forward to testing out the stiffness setting this weekend and FINALLY ordering my tires (305.65R18 BFG ATs). Apparently, it seems like they needed to be activated by fulling compressing them a couple of times after they were released? I don't know, but I'm happy they are working now. Great Ride to work this morning.

 

That's really weird, but glad it worked out.