Smoothest 2.5"-3" Ride:OME or Fox/King/Icon?

What made you decide on Kings vs. other shocks? And TC UCAs vs. others?

 

Im getting Icons and want to know how stiff they are?

 

In regards to the coilovers having to be rebuilt every X amount of miles, make sure you save your stock coilovers, so you can swap them out when you mail off your Kings or ICON"s to have them rebuilt, unless you're doing it yourself or don't mind leaving your truck on stands for a few days-weeks. Unless you're dealing with Camburg then your truck would be on jack stands for a year and a half or so.

What I will probablly do when my ICON's need to be rebuilt is probablly just sell them for about half what I paid or more, indicating to buyer they need to be rebuilt, take the hit on the selling price and let the new owner get them rebuilt and just buy new ones again.

I would be tempted to try Kings next time anyway but on the other hand they are just so freakin' much, plus the resi up front would probablly hit my tires at full lock. I got ICON Non resi front coils and the ICON resi rear shocks for what the Kings up front alone would have cost. If King had non resi's for the 2nd gens like they do for 1st gens I would have bought those in a heartbeat. Like the other dude said, ICON's ride good if you're hauling ass. I'm sure they ride better if you have zero to next to zero lift dialed in but I leave mine cranked to 3" ish. I guess you can also try diff springs and crap too.

 

The COs are expensive for sure, but the Kings aren't as much as a full front/rear set of Icons. I found a place for the front CO Kings for $1045 shipped. But those COs are still more shock than I'll use. I'm just gonna go OME or Bilstein full set.

 

I bought kings because of a couple reasons;

1- I think king actually does vehicle specific R&D which I'm sure fox does not. I've had fox on many motorcycles and mountain bikes and they never come from the factory valved for that specific application and I always had to revalve it anyway. If you buy fox/icon or what ever, it's valved for anything from a f150 to an fj.

2-I live in southern Nevada and King has a really great reputation with the offroad crowd. Only place I see fox is on sponsored vehicles and tow rigs at the dunes! If your not sponsored and have to pay for good stuff, it's King.
3- as far as rebuilding, I do my own valving and rebuilds and I'm familiar with the way King designed stuff. I've got my own tooling/nitrogen to do whatever I want to them down the road. not to say I couldn't rebuild or valve any Coil Overs but out of the box, king is it.

And to answer why I went with TC? same as #2 above...

My recomendation if you offroad twice a year is keep it simple, 5100's & springs front and rear. Get an add a leaf if you really want to keep it cheap. if you want way better ride to match the front though, get full set of leafs, a set with a lift of no more than 2".

 

From the type of driving you say you do I would get the Fox package from DSM posted earlier in this thread or since you seems to be liking the Kings get the Kings and LR UCA's up fron and pick up the Fox 2.0 Rears. You can get it all through Downsouth Motorsports. Give them a call Sonny/Marco/Neil will help you out:

http://downsouthmotorsports.com/

 

Rebuilding is a factor with the top ends, once again for 2 trips off road a year? true, OME's do have a limited warranty I believe, but the 5100's have a lifetime warranty for the original owner and vehicle. It seems this is what you should do...

 

True, but he wants something that rides smooth. Billy's set at 2.5 on stock coils or even with Eibachs aren't setting any records from being smooth

 

Great words of wisdom shared here boys. Thanks.

So Billies are possibly a good way to go for price point but not as smooth onroad as the high-end COs? Is that right? I was hearing that onroad there's not much diff in feel between the high end COs and Billies or OMEs. Its only offroad at higher speeds where the COs get to show off their true capabilities, yes?

I do like the preload adjustability of the COs and the Bilsteins. Is it not possible to put an adjustable collar on the OMEs? I hear they're a better ride than Bilsteins.

Oh, but there is that lifetime warranty of Billies that the others do not have. And no rebuilding, no truck downtime, go through about 3-4 sets of Billies to one pair of Kings/Fox/Icons for the price. Hmm, now I'm back to Billies. Well, since I have Billies on their now, I'm assuming the ride would be at least somewhat similar to stock if I lifted with Billies, right?

 

OME's are just springs...not adjustable coilovers.

you can use the LR UCA's with anything you pick. the coilover/lift type wont matter for this.

If I were you, from what you have all said I would try and get the rear TSB done (free) and get an AAL. then for the front just go with billys and LR UCA's.

 

Billys will ride better than stock at the stock setting. Once you load the springs by adujusting the ride height they get much stiffer than stock. When I had them set at 1.75 I could tell they were stiffer than stock, then when I went up to 2.5 they were really stiff....once they settled they gave me close to 2.25 of lift at the 2.5 setting. With my Icon's they feel like the 1.75 setting on the pavement fro the Billy's but I have them set at 2.75. If you want 2.5 to 3 of life out of the billy's I would suggest getting either the eibach or OME 885x coils and leave the 5100's at stock height.