The blisteins on the rear of my 2004 ram 1500 2wd seem to be crapped out. I did the typical test where you use your weight on corners of the vehicle, get it bouncing, then let go and count it's up and down movements till it settles. It took like 1 bounce for the front to settle on each side, the rear took 5 or 6 bounces to settle on both sides. The blisteins are like a year old so they shouldn't be going bad. Out of curiosity I went and did the same test to my brothers chevy and it's rear settled in 1 or 2 bounces w/ older shocks than mine. I contacted shockwarehouse to see about warranty and went ahead and put the old shocks I had back on. Anybody else having issues w/ blisteins going bad?

 

I blew one within a month on my old 2nd Gen back around 1999 or so. I "volunteered" that I was off-road hunting and they used that to refuse to warranty it. Stating they don't warranty the shock for off-road use - which REALLY pissed me off - since this shock was advertised as an "off-road" shock. Pissed me off so much I took the other three off and put a set of Rancho 5000s on and I won't be buying bilstein ever again.

But 99% of the people with them swear by them...

 

Haha, that sounds like something I would do in that situation. I'm just disappointed w/ them, I hope I can dig up the invoice for warranty replacements otherwise I won't be bothering w/ blistein again.

 

Well I found the invoice, and sent them an email requesting an RMA on the 6th. I haven't heard anything from them other than the confirmation email that they got my request. Is shockwarehouse still a sponsor here, I may need to find another way to get a hold of them. I'm gonna try calling tomorrow.

 

Well I got them on the phone today around 1:30, no issues getting the RGA number once I got through to them. I'll let you'll know if they warranty them, I don't see why they wouldn't though.

 

Well I've had to call them twice over 2 weeks to get everything sorted and going.

May 3:
I called shockwarehouse today and they said they got the return and something like they were waiting for the replacements to get to them. They said they would ship today and I'd get an email w/ info, no email yet but I'll check tomorrow. It's taking a little time, they got the bad shocks on 4-23 so I'm glad I had my old one's to swap in. I hope the next set holds up better than the first.

Today:
Well, had to call them again today. The replacements weren't shipped yet, somehow they had that I wanted new fronts as well. So they got everything taken care of and the shocks should be here next week. As a note to others they charged a small fee, about $14 for me to get the new one's, I would guess it's shipping but the guy said it was price difference from when I originally got them around christmas 2010.

 

I wouldnt have paid that! You had them warrantied, that means Shockwarehouse sends them back to Bilstein for a full replacement set. Not sure why they would even want to charge anything in that case. You got duped.

 

I have to agree with Hammer on the Rancho RS5000. On my last ride, a rice burner, the rubber bushings rotted out after 7 years and 100K plus. I called Tenneco and explained that could not tell then what I had for breakfast yesterday, so a seven year old receipt was out of the question. The customer rep told me to get the part number off the shock and fax it to him with a copy of my vehicle registration. Two weeks later, a proof of puchase card came in the mail. When a company treats you like that, you stay with them. When I got tired of my short bed walking on the highway, I only looked to the Ranchos. This is the time of year they normally have the buy 3, get the 4th.

Oh yea, the shocks were too rusted to read the number, so I looked it up.

 

Yeah, I dunno on their site it says they do not cover shipping for returns/exchanges, it costs me more than $14 to ship the old one's to them via ups ground. If he had said shipping that would have made more sense b/c the site says nothing about price differences for warranty stuff.

My next set of shocks will be from somewhere local probably, just to avoid the hassle of having to swap them out, ship, wait, call several times over a few weeks, it's been a bit of PITA.

 

Well to update again, I had to call again on Wednesday May 23 because I never got the shocks or any tracking info. I talked with a guy and he said he had seen the order and they were about to go out. Finally got an email with tracking info after that and got the shocks today and put them on.

This really was a huge hassle and after being told a couple times they would ship and didn't it's left a sour taste. I had to call them way too many times to get this sorted, they only seem to answer their phones during a narrow time of day which is also annoying. I won't be using shockwarehouse ever again, the price initially was good but not worth the hassle if anything goes wrong.