Rancho Quick Lift vs Bilstein 5100 Leveling Struts

So I see a lot, and I mean a lot of people on forums trying to decide between these two options to level their trucks. In my opinion both are great options and both have their pro's over the other. Let me start off by saying, if you have the money I'd highly recommend using these to level your vehicle over a spacer. While spacers are definitely a budget friendly option, they do have their downfalls.

First off, they aren't adjustable. Basically meaning if you ever want to change height, you'll need to buy and install a new spacer. Whereas with the adjustable shocks, once you have them you can change the height later without having to buy something else, besides a new alignment. Something a little more major for those who it applies to is the spacers limit up-travel. So if your truck does more than just pavement, this can lead to a harsher ride off the road, and even on it. For those of you who aren't familiar with wheel travel, this implies that when you hit a bump and the wheel cycles up and down to absorb it, it can't go as high, so you feel more of the bump. Another pitfall to these spacers is that they can allow the strut to over-extend during down-travel. So when the suspension goes to fully droop out, it'll allow the shock to extend roughly the thickness of the spacer further than it should. This can cause the ball joints to bind wearing those out faster, cause the upper control arm to contact the coil spring potentially damaging those, damage cv axles from binding, the sway bar end-links from binding, and other things. However, don't get me wrong, these spacers still have their place in the market. Are they for a truck that's taken off-road frequently? No. But will they be perfectly fine on a daily driven truck that mostly see's pavement? Most likely yes.

Now onto the adjustable struts. Both of these come in at around the same price range and both (as far as I know) come in both unloaded versions and loaded versions with the coil spring already installed. The Rancho's offer one key feature the Bilstein's don't, you can adjust the ride quality. They have a 9 position dial on them to change the ride from very soft to very firm. This is a nice feature to have when your truck has to do many different things. If your towing, you can firm up the ride. Vacation trip? No problem, just soften it up. Taking it off-road? Adjust it again. Basically these cater to the people who like to have complete control of the ride of their truck, which is awesome to have. The downfall to these compared to Bilstein's is I've seen a lot of people reporting that when people set them to get say 2.5" of lift, they end up with less. Not much less, usually like a 1/4" or so, but still I know it bothers some people when they go to level their truck and it comes up a little shy. So far I haven't seen anyone have this same problem with the Bilstein's though. For ride quality on those, you only get one option, and that's firmer than stock. It'll give your truck that off-road vehicle feel to it. Some people love the feel of a firmer riding truck (including myself), some people don't. But at this point it all comes down to what YOU prefer!

04-08 F150 Leveling Kit Review

Well while I was browsing around on one of the forums I frequent earlier (F150online), I saw someone mention this lift kit:

Black Nylon Lift Kit 3.5-2.5 with Control Arms

Upon first glance at it the first thing that stood out as a red flag to me was that it's a leveling kit that says it gives 3.5" of lift to the front end. For those of you who don't know, anything over 2.5" leveling kit wise on the front end of the 04-08 F-150's is a terrible idea. It gives terrible angles to the ball joints, tie rod ends, and the cv axles too if your 4x4, which basically means that you'll be replacing those components a lot more than normal. I've heard of people where the components were only lasting about 10k miles where they should be lasting 50-70k miles on average. On top of that these huge spacers can also possibly damage the struts or the springs on the struts from allowing them to over extend. 

Now on to the control arms, another red flag for me. No major lift kit company uses these, which to me means if they don't use them there's probably a good reason for it. The only times I've seen extended upper control arms on the 04-08's is on long travel suspension which is a completely different type of kit than your standard lift or leveling kit like this. In those kits it's used to allow more wheel travel without contact while maintaining proper geometry through the suspension cycle. But in this kit the only use I can see for it is because the spacer is so big that with the stock arms, bolting it back together would be next to impossible. So these extended arms are basically there to allow the suspension to bolt together, and nothing more. 

Another red flag to me was the price. Massive leveling kit, blocks, u-bolts, and uni-ball upper controls arms for under 400 seems a bit low to me. Granted this could be some introductory price, but it makes me question the quality of it. I'd think that some new form of leveling kit that allows more lift than any other brand of leveling kit without need a full suspension lift would charge a higher price. Not only because no one else makes it meaning they can corner the market, but also because the price of parts alone would place it above the price of other kits. I see this as one of those kits where the major market they try to appeal to is the people who are new to the scene, don't know what's good or bad, or are looking to save some money. In the end though, it'll end up costing you way more money than you would've saved by doing it right. In my honest opinion, I'd recommend steering away from this kit.

Ford Atlas

Now this is a truck that definitely grabs my attention. It's still two years away but as the concept photos keep rolling out, it keeps looking better. I love the rugged look of it, almost like a cross between the Ford Raptor and the Ford Super Duty. To me it has beautiful body lines that really flow well and give it a completely different look than the current gen F-150's.

The features of it are even better though. The tailgate step is nothing new to trucks now, but it doubling as a extended item carrier is. It pulls up to lock in place and can be used to secure ladders, lumber, etc up and out of the way. Slide out loading ramps is new feature and definitely seems handy. Being able to load and unload your lawnmower, 4 wheeler, golf cart, or whatever else has wheels without having to lug around ramps is an awesome touch. Plus it has a bunch of new trailer assist features that are said to let novices hook up and maneuver a trailer like a pro.

It also has new fuel saving technology, such as shutters that open and close depending on speed to help with the aerodynamics. It has shutters on the grill that work with both the speed, the engine temp, and whether the fan is on or not. Shutters on the wheel that work with speed. Plus the air dam moves up and down dependent on speed to reduce drag. Pretty sweet to me, only downside is that it adds more things that could possibly go breakdown. But with two more years still to work out the kinks and smooth everything out, it should come out pretty nicely.

Ford Tremor

Anyone else been intrigued by this truck yet? Almost seems like a Lightning replacement but with better fuel economy. The EcoBoost engine definitely gives it comparable power to what a Lightning should have (365 HP and 420 TQ) and a 6.5s 0-60 time ranks it with the lightning in my book too. It even has a special appearance package, different interior, etc, all to set it apart from the standard F-150. Boasts a nice price tag too, 38k! What I like more about it than if the Lightning made a reappearance is that the Tremor is available in a 4x4 model. Which to some people I can see how it defeats the purpose of having a street truck, but to those people who need the 4x4 during the winter season, it's a nice option to have over having to buy a another vehicle in addition. The one thing I'm not too sure about is that you don't get that nice deep sound of a V8. Which is one thing I do love.

Yokohoma Geolander M/T Review

I'm gonna go ahead and do a little review here: Recently I just got new tires, went from a set of Yokohoma Geolander M/T's to a set of Nitto Mud Grappler M/T's. So I'll be reviewing the Yokohoma's right now.. I can say for the price of them they definitely exceeded my expectations. Comparable tires are a couple hundred more.

For tread life, being only rotated three times, I still was able to get over 45k out of them (this is on a 1/2 ton truck). Rain performance was to be as expected, they grip good and don't break free easily. However in snow they really shined. I have a 2wd truck, and where driving through 6-10" of snow should have been next to impossible, it did perfectly fine. The only problem I had was in reverse because they have a directional tread pattern, but other than that they took me places in snow that probably wouldn't have been reachable. Noise wise, they weren't too loud at all. I'd say a little bit louder than your average A/T tire. I think that's about all I can say on these tires right now, hopefully this helps someone in the future who may look at these tires!

First Post!!

Just getting started with this here, it'll probably be a little slow in the beginning but hopefully it'll come out strong! The plan is to do some reviewing of the new F-150's coming out as well as parts for older ones, and throw in a little tech stuff too!