Quote:
Originally Posted by leftyguns21
... I purposely chose not to get the air suspension knowing this was coming. the stock KDSS is fine for on-road but as soon as I leave the pavement I am ready to ditch it.
I spent more time today reading about other peoples reviews on other suspensions for the GX and it still keeps me wanting to go this route, once I understand the extra costs
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Oh, ok, so now I get it; if you do not have the ability to lift the rear, you can indeed get a bit low when heavily loaded for camping.
I am not a fan of spacers, but small spacers should not cause issues while preserving the rest. My Moab friend with GX 470 has been running 1.5" front lift from spacers without issues for a while now. He drove Elephant Hill and Sevenmile and other trails fully stock but he does have the ability to lift the rear a bit. Since then he has driven a bunch more with the spacers. Still original front suspension, over 200k now.
I would maybe try 1" all around lift from spacers for practically no money with DIY install. My concern with small spacers on GX would not be offroad but on road; I have no idea how it would corner or handle with spacers all around. My friend's GX drives just fine with the front spacers.
As for the maintenance cost of the ICON and BP51, I have read great things and awful things about both. You will be replacing spherical bearings (if that's what they use) annually from what I know. You may have noises you do not like. Other than that, you could last anywhere between 15k and 40k on rebuilds from what I have read. I am not concerned since only my rears are in that boat. But rebuilding the fronts with any regularity would be quite the hassle for me.
The cost of rebuilding varies greatly from shop to shop, is another thing I have found while reading around. For ICON in CO they list this:
303 Shocks | (303) 900-8306 so maybe call them. I would not expect that one to be the cheapest but I guess you want good work over cheap work.
ICON, being regional, would be my preference from a maintenance stand point. OZ parts are easily available. Until they are not. That was a concern of mine when I took a very hard look at the Dobs MRR. OTOH, I am pretty sure that you will have a very different ride on road if you move on to Icon: very sporty, but not plush. BP51 is supposed to be more sophisticated due to the bypasses. What spring rate does BP51 use? If it is 600lb plus the bypasses maybe that is the ticket from a comfort standpoint with good enough handling.
To sum up, I would try small spacers first and if that does not work I would look into Icon for offroad performance and ease of maintenance OR BP51 for pavement and better match to intended offroad use. I don't know that a perfect solution exists for your needs which is why I am skeptical of ditching the OEM suspension.
