Been a busy couple of months with a new baby coinciding with a bit of an increase load at work, but here is how and why I decided to upgrade the suspension on my Titan.
I am a bit of a suspension snob. Way back in 2004 I bought my BMW R1150GS Adventure. I loved everything about it except the weight and height. Still, I rode it everywhere for several years and after about 45,000 miles of riding I was considering getting something smaller. Around that time there still weren’t any other bikes that could really be the awesome do-it-all bike like my GS. This was still pre-F800GS, Tiger 800, etc. It was either the full size GS/GSA, the Triumph Tiger (no freaking way) or the single cylinder bikes like the F650GS, KLR650 or KTM690. Single cylinder bikes suck on the highway, big time. My options were to get a second bike or lower the bike. Financially it would have been tough to have two bikes, but mostly is was my crappy ex-wife that prevented it. I decided to lower the Adventure. In doing so I went full high end with a set of Ohlins shocks front and rear and the ride quality difference was amazing. And lowering the suspension helped with the weight issue since the center of gravity was now lower and I had better footing. Since then I have become a suspension snob.
The Titan is a pretty comfortable truck and modifications up to this point were the Firestone Ride Rite air bags, a trailer brake controller and the Leer camper shell/cap/whatever-you-call-it-where-you-live. Of course, most of the half ton trucks out now are much more comfortable than the same trucks of yesteryear. Still, my snobbiness could feel that the compression was a bit harsh and the rebound was a bit too quick resulting in a more jolty type ride than I would prefer. I had been looking at various suspension upgrades for the truck over the last year or so. Most of them are rather silly - big giant 6” lift kits to run monster tires actually make the truck worse off road because they lack any real articulation. But there are some legitimate 3-4” lifts that give better articulation than stock, though they typically don’t allow for much larger tire size. The Titan already wears 33” shoes. So the question was if it was worth going for any lift at all or just getting upgraded shocks and struts.
When we were in Death Valley we did some pretty legit off road trails for my taste. I like exploring off road, but I also have no intentions of getting into the super modified rock crawling stuff. Some people really are into that and I think it is fine, but it just isn’t my cup of tea. I want the truck to be able to perform as well as it did since that was about as tough of off roading I would ever do with the Titian, but I wanted a better ride.
This made the selection process pretty easy as no lift was required. Bilstein makes some of the best shocks in the industry, regardless of platform, and the word from the internet forums was that they are the ones to get. Amazingly the cost of four shocks/struts for the Titan from a top brand were about a quarter of the cost of TWO shocks for the motorcycle. But when would I actually do this swap?
We happened to be at the the Marine Corps base in Twentynine Palms, CA this past March. While we were driving around the base I noticed they had an auto hobby shop. A lot of bases have these, but sometimes they can be super crowded. This one had some decent use, but looked like we would be able to get in without too much trouble. The cool thing about these auto hobby shops is that they have lifts and all the tools you could need to do just about anything. Plus they have a few mechanics on standby to provide guidance if you need help. All this for $8 an hour on this base. At home in the storage unit I have jack stands, an air compressor and an impact wrench along with my floor jack traditional tool set with wrenches, ratchets and sockets that were with me. But what I didn’t have in the truck or at home in storage was a spring compressor for the coil over struts. Between the lifts and the spring compressor tool the shop had, it seemed like using the hobby shop would be a great place to do the suspension swap. Plus it gave us some more stuff to do in the desert.
The other great thing about internet forums is that a lot of people do some great write ups on “how to” topics. There was an excellent post with directions and pictures on how to swap out the suspension. There were also a bunch of other user comments with extra tips. I ended up consolidating them into a single document to put on my iPad because we weren’t going to have internet once we were there. Chances are if you are reading this website then you know how to research any mods for your vehicle as well. If not, start looking for the brand or vehicle specific forums and you will find a wealth of information.
The first day we ended up not getting the type of lift we wanted as we went after work. We had a drive on lift and went ahead and did the oil and filter change followed by the rear shocks. But we couldn’t do the front struts as that required the wheels to be off the ground. The rear shocks were super easy. The Titan has a simple leaf spring set up in the rear with an individual shock on each side. A simple bolt removal on the top and bottom, remove the old and insert the new was all it took. The next day we showed up right before opening and got a two post lift to do the front suspension. The front is much more difficult because it was a coil over strut assembly. You have to remove the entire strut assembly and take it over to a spring compressor for disassembly. It actually took both Katie and I together to twist the handle enough to compress the giant 4 x 4 Titan front springs! Once you get the spring compressed you can remove the shock from it. The key is to take a picture or remember exactly how everything lines up as there are places where the top and bottom of the spring have to rest and different bushings have to be placed in a particular order.
The first side we tackled took us over two and a half hours! The second side only took an hour because we learned a few small things that made the second side easier. Such as: the first step in my notes I made was to disconnect the sway bar from both sides. Of course, I only disconnected it from one side. There was enough clearance to remove the entire assembly, but when it came time to put it back in it was just not happening. I think we struggled with reinstalling the whole coil over back into the truck for at least 30 minutes. Once I disconnected the sway bar on the other side, the entire thing just fell out of the way and it was easy peasy. If only I had followed my own directions. As we started the second side Katie said “do you want me to take a picture like we did for the first one?” “Nah, I got this now” was my reply. Bad move. Once we were ready to reinstall the second assembly the shock wouldn’t go into the bottom support because it was rotated just a tiny bit enough that it wouldn’t fit. A problem we wouldn’t have had if we took the picture and made sure the new shock matched the old perfectly. Back to the spring compressor it had to go to be disassembled and reassembled again. We probably could have had the second side done in 45 minutes.
The new suspension on the Titan isn’t quite the night and day difference that it was on my BMW motorcycle, but it still provides a noticeably smoother ride. I enjoy some minor wrenching on things and the ability to have a full shop at my disposal was kind of fun. Katie probably got more than she bargained for as she had previously made comments that she didn’t want to help if all I was going to do was have her hand me things. Well, she did a lot more than just hand me things on this job. Another thing I learned is that I want the Daystar air bag cradles. Putting the truck up on the two post had the tires dropping to max length and I could see the stretch in the air bag rubber. Luckily they held, but it really did highlight what can happen at the extremes of articulation. I will have those installed before my next adventure.