schu

I've had my truck for quite a while now. I bought it new in 03 so I've been driving it for 8 years. During that time I've tried a number of different tires and tire pressures trying to get it to ride nice. I found that the best stock setup is 33" tires with 60lbs in the front and 50lbs in the rear with 200 lbs in the bed. The 35" tires were too tall and spaced out my gearing too much (6 speed manual) while the 31 inch tires tended to be pretty stiff. Running 60-70 lbs in the rear gave me poor traction and poor tire wear.

After playing with it for 8 years I finally got a decent ride out of it, but it still did stupid dodge stuff like the front bottoming out and the rear slamming down on the overload springs. The truck did ok on the street, but I live in Alaska, where not everything is paved, and the stuff that is paved is full of pot holes and frost heaves.

So I decided to look into buying a 1/2 ton truck. After searching around I figured I would be out at least $5k to sell my cummins and get something that was half decent. I thought about that for a while, but I knew I would be disappointed with the 1/2 ton because it's 1/2 the truck. After looking around and not finding anything that I was enthusiastic about, I decided to look into fixing the suspension on my truck.

I called Carli and Thuren, and found that I got much better service from Don at Thuren. I decided to go for it and ordered new 3" front springs, new rear springs, an adjustable track bar, and and his overland shocks.

I called a local shop to check on prices to have this stuff installed but that guy wanted a grand so I figured it wasn't worth it and installed it myself.

The front wasn't super terrible, I did it in 7 hours by myself without a lift in my garage. The rear took another 7 hours, mostly because those rear springs are 95lbs and a few bolts did not want to come loose.

Once I got it together I took it for a ride and wow! I don't know if I would say it rides as nice as a 1/2 on the street as it does bounce around a little, but all of the harshness is gone. It's a firm and comfortable ride. It rides like a truck should. Firm and positive, but not harsh and jarring like it was before.

Off road is a completely different story, it eats bumps. I live on a gravel road and can pretty much fly down it now and it's smooth. The faster I go, the better it rides. It's really nice for side roads that haven't been plowed.

The truck sits up 3" higher on the front and around 1.5" higher in the rear so it makes the truck look much bigger.

Overall I'm very happy. It suits my application perfectly and it turned my truck into something that I enjoy driving.

If anyone has any questions feel free to shoot me a message and I'll try to answer them the best I can. I couldn't find many ride reports before I installed my kit so I wanted to offer one to others looking at suspension kits.

Thanks,
schu

spoolinup

Don is a great guy wont just sell you stuff that you don't need and has time to talk and makes killer stuff. Now you a truck that should last a lifetime.

crackcorn

Schu,

What kind of shocks did Don set you up with? Custom tuned? remote reservoir? I have Thuren control arms and front shocks on my wish list come January or Feb.

pronstar

Good to hear.

Carli and Thuren are really the only games in town, IMHO, if you want to significantly increase the ride & capability of these trucks.

schu

They are his own custom overland shock. No remote, but I think they are valved for this truck and his spring. They seem to work great, but I've never tried the 5160's or the 5100's.