Rancho stuff

I was looking at the billies 5100 and went to a dealer who carried both the Rancho's and Bilstein 5100s. The guy was trying to sell me on the Ranchos and said they are better if you are going to lift you truck. I have not seen anyone on this site ever say they had Ranchos on their truck. Whats the deal with these things??? I remember 10 years ago they seemed like the go to suspension upgrade but now????

 

They're good for big trucks and the like. But for the Taco, the Billy (or the Old Man Emu shock) is the perfect compliment.

 

All the experience i've had with owning Rancho's (jeep tj & nissan pathfinder) has not been good. They ride stiff as shit onroad, and offroad they don't flex smoothly. The Rancho's i think would be good in a heavy full size truck that you needed offroad capability and lots of damping for heavy weight in the back.

The only exception to this i've experienced is they have a system that allows you from the cab, to change the damping of the shocks with a small compressor and tank. A friend of mine has this on his solid axle converted Pathfinder and it works extremely well.

Hope this helps.

 

RONCHO!!

Ok..so maybe my experiences are years & years old (99), but the first impressions are always lasting ones.

I had Rancho kit on my 96 for a couple years. First off....the coils springs weren't side specific and I had to add spacers to adjust for the toyota lean. It was an OK lift....but the front coilover shocks leaked early and I had to get them replaced - Thank gawd, they were lifetime warrantee. The shocks don't last very long especially if you're offroading with them. After 2 years, I took all the Rancho stuff off and put all OME stuff - which was a much better quality stuff to begin with.

Back when I installed the Rancho lift - that's ALL that was available at the time for tacomas (it was 1.5" lift kit).

 

I replaced my stock OEM shocks of my 95 taco with Rancho 5000 shocks. I loved them and had no problems.

 

i had them on my 92 chevy and they worked good for about 5 months then they rusted to shit