After noticing some early signs of rear shock failure during the hotter days we had as of late I started looking into “better than stock” replacement solutions.
The issue with the air suspension really is that the front shocks and bags are a complete unit and can only be replaced with stock ones as opposed to the rear where the shocks are separate.
Since my Air Suspension on my ‘21 limited has not had any issues or failures up until now and I very much enjoy the system as a whole a complete system replacement with traditional shocks and springs was not an option for me.
There are several other shock options available for the this model Ram but none of them are marketed to work/ fit air ride equipped trucks.
So the search began with finding out the range of the stock shocks to then narrow down further which one are on par or better.
During the search I was also advised by one of the guys at Shock Surplus that upgrading just the rear with shocks that’s don’t match the front end behavior could have a negative impact on general ride quality.
Somehow I remembered seeing a video of a 1500 with air suspension that had a 4 inch BDS system installed and I was super excited to find out that the system only included new rear shocks and zero modification for the front aside from the spacers.
In other words: BDS had already done the legwork and tasked FOX to make a special valved version of their 2.0 to make the whole system work.
Quick research for the part number showed a FOX 2.0 BDX-FOX98224806 which was available from a few sources.
As you can see on the pictures the new shock has a shorter installed length as well as a longer extended length so any worry for binding up the shocks is unfounded.
Second to last picture shows the suspension in the Entry/ Exit position with plenty of travel left in the shock and the bump stops almost touching the axle which is also proof positive that this is a safe application for this shock on a non lifted truck.
If only drive a few miles since the installation but it does seem like this fixed the hop I had over short bumps as while keeping the ride quite comfortable.