Cry Once Buy Once vs. Excessive?

Fair point. I heard kings are like 6 months and bilstein is whenever they come in stock.

 

Kings use a chome plated steel shaft. Fox uses stainless steel. 1000x better if you live in a shitty climate

 

Kings can be adjusted in-situ. Is the rest of your truck finalized in terms of weight (armor/winch/gear)? How often can you stomach taking out the shock and adjusting snap rings?

 

Elka are supposed to be faaaantastic in rough climates as the Canadian manufacturer builds them for salt.

Dobinson also has a very good shock reputation.

Foxes are great but rust like everything else, they do restore fairly easily with steel wool.

OME soft ride is good, anything above soft is harsh unless you have bumpers, plates, lots of extra weight. The shock finish is not very durable. Rust will prevail.

Then there is Toytec….10 years ago they put out some parts that I can’t say nice things about. The new aluma series, according to their reps are associated with Elka or Radflo, depending on the product.

Radflo, simply great customer service. Valving MUST be custom tuned to your rig or it will be harsh. Very well made though.

Standard Kings with 600lb coils and ext resis do not need to be revalved for a nearly stock DCSB.

 

I wish Öhlins would get into this game.

 

It's interesting that salt came up. I live in Virginia where we seem to salt the entire winter. Are the Elka's salt resistance high enough to be a differentiator?

The 15% wheeling I do would be intermediate trails with some rock crawling and one stretch of washboards.

Money isn't the deciding factor.

 

Yes. Elka shock bodies are made from hard anodized aluminum where as King bodies a cadmium plated steel.

 

nobody is mentioning ADS shocks, yet they are superbly built and have one of the best coatings of any shock on the market…not to mention they have a lot of R&D. They also use some of the best components. If money really isn’t a problem then check out the Bilstein 8112’s…all of this depends on your needs

 

2nd for ADS. I love mine!

 

@oscolivar1 I think your help is needed. Right @BVita

 

Kings are 2.5. You likely don’t need 2.5s and likely don’t need reservoirs. The kings are a better shock all around over bilstein but offers features that you will never take advantage of, the shock itself is buy once cry once but the added benefits of 2.5 etc are excessive for likely what you’ll be doing. A decent 2.0 coilover will likely do the trick. I recommend Fox as their internals are a bit better than King and should have a 2.0 option.

For everything else go King.

 

Between those two choices, I would (and currently have) Kings. I also live in VA, albeit near the coast but I moved down here from the DC area. Never had any issue with my Kings and corrosion.

Short story time. I bought my OEM Kings second-hand, and they have a combined total of about 60k miles on them. I sold them to a friend and he sent them to accutune for a rebuild and tune. Accutune said they were in such good condition that they didn't need a rebuild and only did the tune. The shocks spent their whole life in PA/MD/DC. I also wheeled the piss out of them.

I know this is purely anecdotal, but they held up great while I had them. All I had to do was replace the lower bearing where it mounts to the LCA but that's a whopping $10 and a couple hours of my time.