Why the Ram’s Rear Coils Beat Leaf Springs
Ride quality, road handling and suspension travel are just a few of the Ram’s advantages.
The Ram 1500 is the only half-ton truck on the market today with a rear coil spring setup, while the competitors from Nissan, Toyota, Chevy and Ford all use rear leaf springs. Today, we take a look at why the coil setup is superior to the competitors’ leaf springs.
Leaf Springs: Pros and Cons
Prior to the fourth generation Ram pickups, Dodge/Ram trucks used a similar leaf spring setup to that used by all of the competitors and those Chrysler Group pickups from the first few generations were great trucks. The upside to the leaf springs is that they are very strong, being comprised of a series of thick metal strips – or leafs – strapped together and fastened to the underside of the truck.
When Dodge/Ram needed a stronger spring, they could simply add another leaf or two to the assembly, improving the strength of the suspension without adding significantly to the cost of the setup. Also, the basic design of a multi-leaf spring allows for some measure of variable rate dampening, as more force applied to the leaf springs leads to more friction between the strips of metal and that leads to increased spring resistance. Of course, that stacked-up metal is also strong and durable, with each layer essentially supporting the next.
The other key upside to the leaf setup is that it has fewer parts than a coil setup, so whether you are repairing or modifying, leaf springs cost less as a system than coils.
The biggest downside to the leaf setup is that it offers limited tuning capabilities. This is old school technology and there is only so much that today’s engineers can do to make a load-rated leaf spring setup ride smoother. This is why many older trucks offer a rough ride to those seated in the back, as the rear leaf setup doesn’t handle bumps as evenly as the front suspension setup with a coil spring and damper.
Coil Springs: Pros and Cons
For the Ram coil spring suspension, we will start with the “cons”, since it is a fairly short list. Since a multi-link coil setup uses a variety of different components, the system has a higher cost than the leaf setup, so a truck with rear coils is generally going to cost more than one with a rear leaf setup. Also, since the coil spring only handles the weight of the vehicle and not the axle location, some coil setups begin to wobble a bit in some situations.
After those issues, the rear coil setup in the Ram 1500 is all upsides. The biggest advantage is that with the various components of the coil setup, engineers can tune the suspension to offer a better mix of functionality and ride quality. By making adjustments elsewhere in the suspension, engineers can increase the load-carrying abilities without causing a rock-hard ride and along those same lines, the handling of the truck can be improved without killing the working abilities.
Finally, since the coil spring offers a much greater range of movement than a leaf spring, the Ram 1500 has greater wheel travel when off-roading, so the coil spring is better on-road, off-road and when carrying a load, but it costs a bit more.
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