What is a good shock for a bone stock '95 F150. This is no sport truck so I am inclined to get a basic shock like Monroe gas ryder or Gabriel. However I have heard Bilsteins are really good (and $$$), but is that overkill for a basic piece of transportation?

 

If you are not looking for anything fancy, I bought Sears gas shocks and I am satisfied with them. They were cheaper than most of the name brand shocks and have the lifetime warranty. As you know the 4.9 has a long life. I think they are repackaged Monroe shocks but I could be mistaken.

 

Bilsteins aren't that expensive, check www.shox.com

 

Thanks StrangeRanger. I put in a quote request for the F150 and the Motorhome.

Thanks Slowsix. I'll check out the cheap shocks for wife's Aerostar. She couldn't care less about performance type shocks.

Now I wonder what a rear sway bar would do for the pickup and motorhome. The RV site BB folks said I can't put a rear swaybar without replacing the front swaybar with a matched front-rear set or I would throw of the understeer/oversteer situation. I don't buy it. Was going to get a Helwig for the rear of motorhome as it already has factory bar on front. Any thoughts on this? Maybe I should put it as a separate post.

 

For the sway bars, they may cause a slight understeer, although I think that would be a good thing in a top heavy RV. To help the stock front bar, try some poly bushings if you don't already have them to tighten up the action. Heck, we run Winny bars (26,000#) under the back, stock in the front of the E-350 single rear tire bucket vans and those things flat out handle.

 

The Helwig bar comes with poly bushings. Let's see, a race driver once said, "understeer is when the front end hits the wall and oversteer is when the rear end hits the wall." Hmmmm, think I'd rather deal with understeer as it is easier to crank the wheel a bit more than trying to keep the rear end from skipping out. Maybe I will reconsider that rear bar for the motorhome.

Got my prices on the Bilsteins from Shox.com. Motorhome $70, pickup $60. I got the Motorhome fronts locally thru a VW performance shop for $65 each and no shipping. I even got a bonus because I saw all these old VW crankshafts lying around and asked if I could have one cheap for a paperweight. They gave me on free. It is forged steel as I put it on a carpet and tick it with a screwdriver and it rings like a church bell--sweet. Now what would really be cool would be a 300 I6 crankshaft. Anyway, I am going to give Don's sport a call as $60 each is too much for the pickup.

 

So I went ahead and got Bilsteins. They ended up costing me $60 each. The old shocks still had a lot of resistance to compression and expansion, but working them a couple times on the bench I noticed 1) that I could smell oil, 2) there was a loose area in the last compressed inch on one shock that did not resist, and 3) when I compressed them and laid them on the bench they re-expanded so slowly that it took about 20 minutes to extend back out. Bottom line, these shocks probably had a few more miles on them, but it was worth replacing them. Had I known they had metric nuts on a Motorcraft factory part, I would have saved my self some hassle. Rounded one nut off and had to work with a vise grips. One hour to remove one nut on top of shock and then when the nut was at the top the bolt finally twisted off. Whew! Got a bruise on my upper arm from levering against the wheel well edge. Now the other shock's upper bolt came right off--bottom bolts easy too. Bilsteins bushing in bottom about 3/16 wider than stock and had to hammer on block of wood to force it into the mount. Also, Gabriels come with a wire holding the shock short enough to easily install, whereas, with the Bilstein you have to push it up under the truck and into the mount--rather difficult.