I'm another happy RS9000XL owner. Had them on for a few months now and loving it. I've adjusted them over time and now run mine at 4 in front and 2 in rear (when empty). The roads here in Louisiana are pretty crappy in some places, and I got tired of bouncing all over the place. I did notice with my softer settings that the truck has a little more body roll through tighter turns, but its not like this truck was designed to take hairpin turns anyways.

Hope you enjoy your new purchase like I have.

 

I'm a believer in them, had them on 2 different trucks, 5 in front,3 or 9 when towing in the rear,never had the in cab adjustable option but it would be nice. Would buy again for sure. I wished they made them for cars.

 

I have put them in two trucks, so far they work great!

When the shocks are new, remove the adjusting ***** and fill the cavity behind them with lithium grease.

It will help to keep out the salt water

 

I am not sure my 9000x are helping. I have a 2200# cabover camper on my F250 CC SB with these shocks on 9 and airbags about 30 pounds to bring the bed back to regular height. I am getting a terrible bounce, real stiff. I can see my cabover bounce as well as the rear of the camper. I think the back shocks are not strong enough. So i may say it depends on what you haul (unless someone has a solution for me that I'm not thinking of, that's my vote against these shocks).

 

I am hauling a heavy 10.6' Bigfoot camper on 99 F350 4x4 CC Dually long bed truck - Rancho 9000's work very good in this truck.
By the way, your issue could be 1 Ton Camper loaded in 3/4 Ton short-bed truck

 

The setting of 9 is the issue. If you leave the fronts at about 8 and soften up the rears, I bet you'll see a better ride. That would at least be a good starting point. No sense in going that hard on the shocks, especially when using air bags. Adjust the settings until you get a good combination, changing up the fronts vs. rears will make your trips more enjoyable (and less kidney jarring!).

 

The shocks dampen the ride by softening the wheel travel. They don't support the ride. The springs and air bags support the ride. I would as said above adjust the rears to a softer setting. I wouldn't think much is going to ride well with a 2200 lb camper plus stuff back there.

 

I really like them a lot so far. The ride is much more controlled. Currently I have them set at 5 all the way around and the ride quality is very noticable compared to factory. Two thumbs up

 

I held off on adding my 2 cents worth for a couple days, but I checked a couple things this evening so I figured I would chime in

The 9000 shocks are a huge difference. Plain and simple.

To get more complex - the adjustability is a great tool to "tune" the ride. The hard part about "tuning" is you can't crawl under the truck at 70mph going down the road so seeing a difference in the ride quality is real hard to do unless you have the MyRide system.

I happen to have the MyRide system also. You can tell very quickly the difference in ride quality on rough roads. On smooth roads it will be barely noticeable as the only time you will "feel" a change is when the shock absoarbers are actually moving enough to feel it = you need suspension travel which smooth roads don't provide much of.

The handling of the truck changes quite a bit too. The higher the setting up front and the more "solid" the front end is in turns, lower setting = looser.

If you are really wanting to tune the ride quality and not "set it and forget it" then get the MyRide system. If you use your truck in a wide range of loads and road conditions you would get the most benefit from the MyRide system for sure. Take notes of what settings you like best and when you are under similar conditions (towing a boat, throwing in your camper shell for the weekend, or hauling a load of mulch) dial up what you like and you're good. You can do the same thing with the ***** but it takes more time and the hard part is figuring out what settings you like in the first place.

One note I will throw out there is regarding the air lines on the system. This is where my "delay" stems from. I've had a tough time keeping the lines pressurized. The compressor and the valve kit does its job, but the hoses and fittings can be a pain to work with. When I first installed the kit (there is a video I posted on here somewhere) the compressor would run pretty frequently to maintain pressure. To not burn up the compressor I stopped pressurizing the shocks unless I was on specific roads or otherwise got irritated with the "woops" going down the road.

So I crawled under the truck in the past couple months and did the soapy water test on all the fittings. The rear drivers side shock was leaking. So I used Rancho's recommended "hose dipped in oil" method to seat the O rings better (and re-cut all the hoses for a fresh insert). This was a big difference over the dry hose fit, it calmed the compressor way down but didn't take care of it completely.

The next method I tried was to use some thick grease. I can't remember what kind it is, but it is green and comes in a gun tube. I did the same thing again - re-cut the hoses and inserted them with a dab of grease. When I was done the hoses wouldn't pressurize at all. Every time I re-set the compressor the controller gave me an error message. The compressor will pulse once and if it senses pressure it will run to get to the pressure you have set, and the instructions were telling me off the code that there was no pressure.

So this evening I was going to re-work all my joints again, but I got the system to pressurize right off the bat. I went back to the soapy water test and went through all the joints - not once, but twice. No leaks! However, my compressor still runs quite frequently (more frequently than after I dipped the hoses in oil). I don't get it - I can't get any bubbles on any of the fittings and yet there is still a slow leak somewhere, enough to get the pump to kick on. I doubt its one of the hoses - they are run and tied up to not rub and are away from direct heat (exhaust manifold, etc).

I still like the shocks and the MyRide system. It is a world of difference from the stock ones, by FAR.

 

Replaced my factory shocks with a set of 9000's, much better ride. I have the fronts set to 6 and the rears at 3 when empty also, both get bumped up a notch or 2 depending on what I'm towing also. You wont regret putting them on and the $100 rebate helps alot!!!

 

I have 9000XL's with My Ride. After a year or so, no issues. I did have one air line blow out, but that was my fault as I did not secure it properly and it shifted so that it came withing a couple inches of head pipe. A long hard tow on a hot day and the tubing softened and blew up like a balloon and popped....
I used dielectric grease on tubing before putting into fittings. My compressor actuates only when truck is started. No cycling, even during multi-hour trips.

Settings:
empty: 0/0 to 2/2 depending on road conditions
trailer and a few hundred pounds in bed: 4/4
trailer and BIG load (over 7K on rear axle): 6/8

 

I looked in to my system loosing pressure again last night. Before I was looking at all the hoses for a leak around every fitting.

There was a leak around where the fittings bolt up to the shocks themselves. I hosed down all the fitting housings with soapy water and sure enough that's where I found my problem.

The downside is that leak was enough to let water in so I had to clean out the piston a bit along with the O-ring. The O-ring was still in good shape. I gave everything a coat of grease (O-ring track on the fitting, popped the O-ring on, greased that, put some grease on the inside shock track, as well as the gasket). It took two attempts to get the O-ring to seat properly inside but I got it.

I will post back with how it holds up. I hosed everything with soapy water again after the fix and no bubbles anywhere. We'll see if I did any good.

 

Good on you!
I love it when I finally figure out and fix niggling problems.

 

I have the plow and camper package on my 2012 F250. The front sits about an inch higher than the rear. I want replace the original shocks with the Rancho 9000XL. Would the stock height front shocks and 2.5 lift for the rear shocks work to level or give a slight nose down to the front?

NAD

 

1. If you have no lift, then get the stock height shocks.
2. Shocks are not load bearing, and will not change the height of your truck.
3. There is always a little give and play in the length of the shock, so say you had a 1" lift, you could still use a stock length shock.