I was thinking about this as well..
Was out at local 4x4 place and blasting around about 40 or so and my truck rode so so,,, but kinda jarring... I was wondering if i got a nice set of shocks would make it handle better, or if it was a waste with leafs
Springs just suspend the weight of the vehicle, shocks are everything. As GreenieK30 said, 40 dollar springs and 350 dollar shocks is about right -
Blazers are heavy, and the problem most people end up with is very stiff spring packs and cheap shocks that are "universal", not necessarily designed to work with the springs. They simply do not have the amount of rebound damping necessary to control stiff leaf packs, and often times have too much compression damping for the springs -
Picture your spring/shock combo working while hitting a bump:
wheel/tire hits bump forcing spring/shock up
Spring is stiff, plus cheap shock is trying to keep the spring from compressing due to too much damping
After the bump, spring is trying to droop back down, shock is trying to keep it from happening because of too much rebound damping. We call this "packing", and it's bad because if your spring/shock hasn't drooped back to ride height by the time you hit the next bump, it's even worse than the first.
Now take it a step further - remember the over damped cheapo twin tube shocks? They are working really hard trying to control your heavy truck and stiff springs, and they start to heat up and fade after a few good hits. Now your fluid is really thin and foamy inside the shocks, and you have much less damping, so it feels like you don't have shocks on your rig until you let them cool down.
How do you avoid this? Mono tube shocks like the bilsteins, BBCS shocks, or the rebuildable Kings, Swayaways, F-O-A (great value for the money), etc.
KTMoutfront runs 2.5 or 3.0 shocks on his rig, and has a coilover AND bypass shock at each corner. Watch a video of his rig landing from a jump. Talk about smooth...
So to answer the question - what's your budget? Bilstein 5125's are about 150 a pair, BBCS are 110 each, F-O-A 2.5's are about 200 each, and you go up from there- Search pirate classifieds or
www.race-dezert.com for a used set of 2.5" shocks, rebuild them and valve them for your rig, and you'll see you really can make leaf sprung rigs ride nice.
