Specifically what I did not like about the rear King shocks:
The shock itself is fantastic, but King needs to do a little more in the way of R&D with their valving. I didn't run these shocks for too long but in the time I did have them, I ran them over just about every type of terrain imaginable from the dunes in the desert, hard pack desert, some rock crawling, and lots of street driving. The valving never seemed correct to me which became even more noticeable when running over terrain fast in the desert. The compression valving specifically was valved too stiff, even with considerable extra weight on my rig. On top of this, I had the reservoir model with the adjustable compression. I was never able to run them on any setting other than the softest setting on the compression adjuster. I debated on popping them off and having ORW re-valve them, but its such a pain and unless you have the resources to re-valve / re-charge the shocks yourself, it could get expensive real quick after you play with the valve stack a bit. Not something I was willing to do.
Soooooo. I spoke to numerous people in the industry for literally hours and hours about this problem and most all were not surprised in the least at the issue I was having. Not to deter anyone from purchasing OEM replacement shocks from the "big" vendors" ie. King, Fox, Sway Away, but here is what was common among all my conversations. These major shock mfg's like King and Fox make absolutely phenomenal hardware, on any given day of the week one or the other could arguably be the best in the industry however these companies were built around making shock absorbers for race cars, not oem street trucks. That being said, it is believed that they simply do not spend the time or money on the r&d to tune these OE replacement shocks as a company such as Icon would. Icon builds their equipment from the ground up with a specific vehicle in mind. Some people may not fully realize what is involved in tuning a shock, there are hundreds and hundreds of variables from the shim thickness, stack formation, diameters of the shims, placement in the valve stack, the charge pressure, and then there progressive and digressive valving, flutter stacks, etc.
To summarize, the kings were good but I did not feel like they were what I wanted. I have had the rear Icon bypass's on for 2 days now and havnt even started to tune them (going to wait until the front is done) and I already can tell a huge improvement.
Again, this is based on my personal experience. No plugs for any brand, I am far from a brand loyalist as I have ran shock offerings from Fox, King and now Icon. I researched and researched some more and spoke to people with true "experience" in the industry and formulated a decision based on this and my personal experiences. Other's perceptions of what works and doesn't may vary.
