I've been noticing some excessive bouncing and up & down motion while driving. Especially this past weekend while doing a lot of highway driving. It seemed every bump we went over bounced for 3 or 4 seconds afterward. So I'm thinking shocks/springs and did the standard check: pushed down on the front end and watched the bouncing. It levelled after 1 bounce which seems seems decent and would normally indicate no replacement necessary. Can I test any other way?

I'm also bottoming out when going over railway tracks around 50-60 mph and wondering what can be done about this. Looked underneath and can definitely see evidence of bottoming out on the rubber stops. Here's a pic, not sure if it's totally visible:


So I guess my questions are:
1) How can I further test my shocks and or springs?
2) How easy is the replacement, if necessary?
3) Can you recommend some replacement parts, if necessary? I do not drive off-road and am not raised. Just looking for decent suspension for bad roads and occasional towing & heavy loads. I'm in Canada and have been looking at parts on RockAuto, AutopartsWay, PartSource & CanadianTIre.

2004 Dodge Dakota V6 2WD automatic with approx 82,000 miles. I bought this truck used a couple months ago and do not know any previous maintenance history.

 

For one, I wouldn't go over railroad tracks at highway speeds.
Second, you have struts up front, not shocks.
For replacement parts, doing some towing, I get the Monroe Sensa-Tracs at all four corners. I got them for my Dak about 2 months ago and they're great.

 

Why do you say struts? The factory service manual says shocks, and all parts look up websites show shocks for this model and not struts. Thanks for the sensa-trac suggestion. cheers

 

Whoops, misread the year of your truck under where it says your join date. Sorry about that. You do indeed have shocks. And I still recommend Monroe Sensa-Tracs. Or Ranchos.

 

I just installed the Monroe Reflex on mine - I like them, but I don't have anything to compare them to: https://dodgeforum.com/forum/2nd-gen...33-shocks.html

 

Not sure how common this is but my stock springs just turned to mush on me and did the bouncy bounce thing so I replaced them much better now.

They are not that bad price wise around $110 a pair be sure to replace the spring isolators at the same time $12 each

Check this thread on lower ball joint replacement the whole post to the end https://dodgeforum.com/forum/2nd-gen-dakota/231427-2-wheel-drive-lower-ball-joints-how-to-w-pics-3.html

Get better springs this is my old with the new better springs by side count the turns on the spring

 

New coil springs are far bigger job than just the shocks... I want to make sure they're bad before diving in. It's my understanding that shocks go bad much more often than the springs do. And it's a lot easier to test the shocks than the springs.... how do you test those anyway?

 

All I can say is I had some good KYB shocks and still had the bounce only complaint I have with the new springs is I lost 1/2 inch in height I was told that's common not sure why that is but aftermarket springs are a bit lower than OEM but they are stronger springs so I guess that makes up for the small height lose

 

It sounds like shacks need replacing. I have Sensa-Tracs on the front and still have the factory ones on the back.

 

I should have mentioned that I'm just using these tracks as an example. And they're the ones with the pavement built high around for faster driving. For instance, my other car (a mazda protege) doesn't bottom out when going over them at similar speeds.