drmoore71
Elite Explorer
- Joined
- March 30, 2000
- Messages
- 958
- Reaction score
- 1
- City, State
- houston, texas
- Year, Model & Trim Level
- 2006 Z-71 suburban
Okay, bear with me here, this is going to be a long one. About 60,000 miles ago, I bought a set of Rancho 9000x's for my 2000 4x4 XLT with about 2" TT and Warrior shackles and AAL in rear. The rear shocks are fine, but the fronts, I noticed, were too short. They limit full droop by somewhere between 1" and 2". I didn't realize this until they had been on the truck for about 55,000 miles. I just figured that the banging noise in the front when I encountered a big dip in the road was the stiffer shocks causing the front suspension to extend really fast. What it actually was was the valve in the shock smashing into the top of the shock body. When I saw what was happening, I went to AutoZone and bought a pair of what were listed as 2" extensions for the top stud of the shock. Problem solved, right? Wrong. Now the shocks, while admittedly riding much softer, were now bottoming out on even the slightest of bumps. UGH! So I decided that the topping out was slightly more acceptable, so I decided to take off the extensions. Now comes the fun part. The extensions had completely galled the threads on the shock stud, rendering the shocks useless. Now I had to get a new pair of front shocks. I went to the local 4WheelParts and asked for a pair of Rancho 5000's that were about two inches longer. No problem was the response and I walked out the door with a pair of shocks for a Cherokee. Problem solved, right? Wrong. I went home to put the new RS5000's on the truck, and found that they were completely different than the Ford specific ones and would not clear the CV boots. I put them back in the box and back to 4WheelParts I went. After a lot of wrangling and thinking between me and two techs there, we decided to put the Pro Comp MX-6 on the truck, since they are an inverted shock, they should clear the CV Boots. So off I go, back to the house with my shiny new MX-6's and again, problem solved, right? Wrong. The bottom mounting point an oversized design and still runs into the CV Boot. Back to 4WheelParts, and...well you get the picture. I ended up buying a 4x4 Explorer specific pair of RS5000's which are, of course, too short, but I have an idea. What if I were to cut the mounting stud off the top of the shock body (it is only spot welded on two sides of what looks like a standard 3" length hex bolt), and welded a longer hex bolt back on to the shock body? Does this sound like a feasible solution? Any suggestions or feedback would be appreciated. One thing I am concerned about is overheating the body during the welding process and causing an explosion, since I am operating under the belief that the RS5000 is gas charged. Please let me know what you think. So sorry for the long read.
doug
doug