Repair-It

Driver's side lower control arm looking pretty sketchy. Significant material missing near lower shock mount and the spring mount is also not looking too safe. I should probably plan to do the lower control arms. Having a lower fold in half while driving wouldn't be very pleasant.

Moog has a complete arm with ball joint for $131.
https://www.rockauto.com/en/moreinfo.ph ... 01&jsn=465

I would also want to do a few other items.

Stabilizer bar end link kit
https://www.rockauto.com/en/moreinfo.ph ... 0&jsn=2386

And front shocks, to match the new rears I did 4 years ago
https://www.rockauto.com/en/moreinfo.ph ... 6&jsn=3528

Put this in my cart. That would be another $344 into the truck not including the bumper I just bought. Is this mechanically totaled?

If it isn't mechanically totaled yet I have more things.

The passenger side spring broke half a coil a few years back so....I should probably do two new front springs.
https://www.rockauto.com/en/moreinfo.ph ... 2&jsn=7635

And spring insulators....
https://www.rockauto.com/en/moreinfo.ph ... 4&jsn=7641

And bump stops
https://www.rockauto.com/en/moreinfo.ph ... 9&jsn=7642

That brings the damage up to $530 before tax/shipping/discount. Ouch.

This finally happened. This control arm literally wants to bend in half. I drove it home on eggshells. I ordered springs, LCAs and shocks. Just realized I forgot the stabilizer bar links and bump stops. Crap, I better add that.

And done. I wanted to run to the transfer station one last time before commencing with the work so I inspected the control arm a little more carefully. While it was pretty sketchy I determined that there was enough meat for another trip. And there was.

About $566 worth of product from Rockauto (shipped), plus another $40 or so in hardware. So call it $600. The only hardware I ended up needing was lower shock mount bolts, nuts and washers. The lower control arm hardware was like perfect and everything else I got with the new parts.

Started it Saturday afternoon with Bill and finished Sunday morning myself. Not too bad really. I got Moog LCAs with ball joints and oddly they are sealed. I mean, whatever. They'll outlast the truck easily. Unlike the SRX, on this truck, the driver's side seems noticeably worse than the passenger side.
Notice how this is still intact. Driver's side though..... One funny thing happened. When we were jacking the truck up initially, the driver's side shock decided to completely puke out all of its fluid. Never really seen that before and I was relieved (and surprised) that it was just the shock. It looked like brake fluid at first from where the puddle was. Don't worry, that will still happen later. There are some frame issues with this truck but the worst ones seem to be in the middle where there is some significant missing material. The front has its issues but it looks worse than it is. The paint or whatever it had tends to scale and make it look like Titanic wreckage. But it generally wire brushes off and most of it seemed solid underneath. I did sort of a half-assed CRC treatment to sections of the front. I think the rear is pretty barnacley but the middle section I guess somewhat concerns me for inspection coming up early next year.

2 years in and these Monroe front shocks are not great. Left front might be leaking. Both have fairly poor damping performance.

So I splurged on a set of KYB Monomax which is a high performance truck shock. Around twice the price of the Monroe but probably way more than twice the shock. $118 for the front set before shipping and tax stuff. I could get Bilstein B6 4600s for a bit more but did some research and decided against it, as tempting as it was.

https://www.rockauto.com/en/moreinfo.ph ... 56&jsn=555

I received my shocks.

Tackled this after I did the S550 strut. It's all about front shocks this weekend.

Side note, this will need upper ball joints at some point. The boots are totally trashed. Plus the control arm bolts are pretty rusty looking. That's a problem for future me.

The front left was definitely leaking.
Removal wasn't too bad since they weren't on the truck very long. I just used a ratcheting 19mm wrench on the nut and a crescent wrench to hold the shock rod. Nut came right off (I did use PB). Actually I could have removed the shock with the wheel on, but I checked the wheel bearings and they both needed a little adjusting so I ended up pulling the wheels and doing that.
However, the form/fit of the KYB Monomax seems a bit different than the Monroe's which I think matched the factory shocks. I consulted the internet and KYB actually has a little tech article about this. It sounds like there is an internal bump stop that makes the shock shorter.
https://www.kyb.com/resources/technical ... e-vehicle/

Also, the threaded part is narrower, and the bushing is also smaller diameter. Kinda weird for a beefed up truck shock. But, the good news is, the smaller upper mounting hardware let me use my old school shock nut tool (I think Lisle) that fits over the nut, and then a smaller piece slides in and holds the shock rod from turning. So that was probably on purpose. Additionally, the threaded portion of the shock rod was the perfect length so when the nut stopped turning, the bushings were perfectly pre-loaded. Definitely some re-engineering here and I appreciate that.

Installation is the reverse of removal. However, because it was shorter, I had to jack up the lower control arm quite a bit to get the lower bolt through. Kinda weird but this really does hold the suspension up higher at full droop and that still seems a little weird but since it was an active design choice, I'll go with it.

Looks good. I had to apply the stickers myself.
The directions are undecipherable but I didn't need them. The upper hardware is a standard bushing/washer sandwich affair.
Road test showed that these are AMAZING. This is exactly what I wanted. Body motions perfectly controlled. It just feels nice and solid. The KYB catalog markets the Excel-G as a twin tube OE replacement, the Gas-a-just as a monotube, 25% higher damping/performance shock, and the Monomax as a 40% greater damping/max performance shock. The P/N for the rear is one higher than the front, yet it seems to be for GMT-800 applications because most of the Amazon reviews were for GM trucks AND actually the KYB catalog even says it's for GM (and Dodge).

I went on an extended test drive with Ian because I kept trying out the various crappy back roads we have around here and it was a joy to thrash around believe it or not. It also makes me want to redo all of the towing I did this month. I am very impressed and will be getting a pair for the rear so I have a full matching set, for maximum handling capability.

They are definitely more of an on-road type shock though. They do a great job making everything feel planted and solid but for high impact bumps, I think they are a bit harsh. But this is a totally acceptable tradeoff and the truck has a ton of sidewall anyway. I tried to get some speed over some known whoops and it was enough to just about top out the front end travel, I think. It felt amazing though. The weight was extremely well controlled and it just instantly settled itself.