Had very bad cupping on my front tires for several months. Came to the conclusion that new shocks were in order. I went with the Yellow/Blue Bilsteins, rotated my tires and problem solved......temporarily!!

Yes, my old shocks were shot and the ride with the new ones was AWESOME. All of a sudden the problem is back....cupping of front tires again.....shocks have only been on truck about 3 months. My question is this....should I have gone with the Silver/Black shocks since I have a 2" leveling kit on the truck and they compensate for the extra height? I'm under the impression that the longer shocks have a "wider range of working motion" so to speak. Would that possibly solve my issue?

What's the consensus......guys with leveling kits, are you running the yellow or silver Bilsteins?

 

^^^Why are the words tires underlined in my thread??????

 

I run the 5100's.. or the "sliver" ones. I love them. As far as the word "tires" being underlined, that's just the owner of this site making money off of links from Vigilink, another company.

 

Maybe it's the tires. I haven't had that problem since I had wranglers. No other change to the truck. Craig

 

So.....are the 5100's a better choice since they're longer and can accomodate the 2" spacers better?

 

The "silver" ones were made longer for the lift/leveling. Standard height requires the blue/yellow.

I have the leveling kit and the 5100's with no issues.

But I really don't think that shocks are your issue. You wouldn't notice a difference in the two until you reached the working limits of the shocks. That which you may never reach.

My guess is-- in order of likelyhood-- tires not properly balanced; tie rods worn; track bar worn. Possibly a combo of a couple.

 

I hated my yellow ones. The OEM shocks with 70k had a better ride.

 

Tires are more than likely not balanced. They were balanced when installed about 5 years ago so, that could be part of the problem. The entire steering system is only about 2 1/2 years old and still tight as can be. Track bar was replaced with adjustable jobber just a handful of months ago.

I know the old shocks I took off the front is what caused the tire cupping because they were sloppy as a wet noodle. Installed new shocks and rotated perfectly square shouldered tires to front and problem took months to show back up. Alignment is spot on. Both inside/outside shoulders of the tires are starting to cup again just like the other tires with worn out shocks did. Surely the "new" shocks aren't giving up this early in the game!!

 

I have the 5100s (silver & blue) on the front with my leveling kit, they do well.

For the tires, I rotate & balance mine every 5k to help them last. That is about once a year (I drove 8-9k/yr avg). Go ahead and get yours R&B'd and see how they do.

 

Bilstein HD shocks (yellow and blue) are for oem height trucks, and are actually valved by Bilstein for stock trucks.

Bilstein 5100 (silver and black) come in TWO different configurations--

one set of part #'s are for 0-2" lifted trucks (stock to 2" level kits) and one set are for 2-4" lifted trucks.
BOTH sets of 5100 use a more generic valving (not for stock trucks), but still offer a firm and responsice, but not stiff, ride.

You never mentioned what tires you have on the truck....tire quality could well be the problem, very doubtful that the Bilsteins are going bad already.

 

The tires are stock size Hankook Dynapros. The tires that are now on the rear got really bad wear patterns from the worn out shocks up front. Like I stated, put good square shouldered tires up front with new shocks and all was good until about a month ago....tire cupping started back again. Tires ARE about 5 years old but they wore perfectly fine until the shocks gave up the fight.