Got them in Thursday, put them on Friday. What a difference. Apparently, the OE shocks were fairly worn. Wasn't too bad until I put a set of BFG A/T KO's (HEAVY) on the truck over the summer. I may not have noticed if the degradation of the OE shock occurred over time and the heavier tires might have just made it more apparent. It made more noise, but I had also put on a 2.5" NCD leveling kit around the time I put on the tires, which was causing the upper control arm to hit the coil buckets at full droop so I figured much of the noise was attributed to that. Until I started paying closer attention and noticing rebound movement seemed excessive coming off of speed bumps.

Did some poking around and it seems the OE shocks don't use nitorgen or even a spring to pu pressure on the oil, but rather some foam which apparently deteriorates over time. The shock appeared to provide resistance to movement still (checked with my body weight), but it may be that under higher speeds, its aerating due to the lack of pressure on the oil.

So I ordered a set of the 5100's. Other than being a better shock, there isn't a whole lot to the rear shocks. The fronts, however, include a preload adjustment at three settings using a snap ring. Its basically, stock height, 1" lift or 2" lift. So I ditched the leveling kit and used the 2" setting. While there is some concern with leveling with preload in that you lose droop, I did a side by side between the Bilstein and the OE shock and it looks like the Bilstein has about 1/2" more droop (which translates to about 1" more at the wheel). If my guestimate is accurate, then I've likely only lost about 1 inch in droop, which is fine as it prevents the UCA from contacting the coil bucket.

Once I got them on, I took it for a drive. WHAT A DIFFERENCE. Drove over several speed bumps at different speeds and it feels like there is no front rebound movement. In fact a lot of bumps I had gotten accustomed to slowing down for made no noise or excessive movements at all at speed. The rear feels like it allows a little more rebound movement than I would like, but then again, I tend to prefer car like handling. Its not bad though, and I hauled a 350 pound load centered behind the rear axle and it rode great. Hell, I could hardly tell it was there.

I can't say how other shocks for the Titan perform, but I'm plenty happy with these. Defintely a huge improvement ofver the degraded OE shocks.