Installation Time
(approx) 2 Hours
Difficulty Level:
Light to Moderate mechanical skill required.
Installation Guides
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Hey, guys, Adam here with americantrucks.com. Today we're taking a quick look at and installing the Fox IFP Coil Over Shock available for the 0 to 2-inch Lifted '14 to '18 RAM 1500s whether it be an EcodDiesel 5.7 or your V6 model without air ride. And this is gonna be a great option for the RAM owners out there who are looking to upgrade their front coil overs or the front strut to get something that's more dynamic, better for on and off-road driving, and has much better components. Now, I'll break down all the details of every component and the makeup of this coil over from Fox a little bit later in the video when we compare it to the stock component. But upfront, I wanna hit you with some of the bigger details.The big thing about this shock from Fox is among other things, the fact that you can adjust preload. Now, preload is essentially how much tension or compression is on your spring prior to having the weight of the vehicle on it. So, what that basically means is your weight of the vehicle like it is now up in the air. So, we have a little bit of preload here right out of the box that'll give you somewhat close to a factory ride quality, maybe be a little bit stiffer and a little bit sportier. You can adjust that preload to condense that or compress that spring a little bit more if you'd like a tighter sportier suspension. Can also take it the opposite way and expand that with less preload to give you a more comfortable or fluid ride with a looser spring rate. So, that's something you can do here that you can't do with your factory shock, and again, I'll take it in detail later on. Now, this also has a larger shaft, a higher quality piston that has advanced JM20 suspension fluid, that's better for variable temperatures. So, if you're taking your truck to its extremes on or off-road, this shock and coil over assembly is better suited to handle it. Uses quiet nitrile rubber bushings for greater wheel articulation, perfect for lifted applications or off-road use and it has a number of other beneficial features here that I'll break down soon.Now, this coil over from Fox come in right around 500 bucks apiece and are sold individually. So, you got to pick them up separately to complete the front end of your truck and you can pair those nicely with Fox rear shocks to really get the full suspension effect of Fox Racing equipment. Now, it is definitely recommended to pick them up as a complete set. But if you want to just tackle the front end first, you can definitely do so and it has a huge impact on your truck's performance on and off-road.Now, the install for this I'm gonna give two out of three wrenches on our difficulty meter, there's no modification necessary. As a matter of fact, it's actually pretty simple to tackle in your driveway at home with very simple hand tools. Now, I'd recommend having air tools if you have access to them, ratcheting wrenches go a long way. There's definitely specialty tools that can make life a little easier, but it can be done with simple hand tools. So, I'm gonna take you through every single step of the process. It'll take about two hours from start to finish, what do you say we get started?All right, tools used in this install include an impact gun, I also use an air tool as well, half-inch extension 17, 21, 15/16 and a swivel socket, torque wrench, a bungee cord or something similar is recommended, 17-millimeter ratcheting wrench is recommended, 15-millimeter and 16-millimeter ratcheting wrenches, 21-millimeter wrench, 3/8 ratchet, pry bar, hammer and a flathead screwdriver.First thing's first, we're gonna tackle our driver side. Now, we got our wheel out of the way, and we want to tackle removing the ABS line from the knuckle itself. So, if you follow this brake line down, this here is attached to the knuckle right past the rotor. You don't need any sockets or anything like that, you're really just gonna pull straight back, you might have to wiggle it back and forth, but it'll detach and from there we can move forward.Next step, we're gonna disconnect our sway bar end link from the sway bar at the top here. Now, this is a 17-millimeter nut and if you're having trouble getting this off, sometimes when you start loosening it, the entire bushing will start spinning and the stud will rotate with it making it really difficult. If that is the case, grab a 17-millimeter wrench and a 7-millimeter socket and you can hold this top portion steady so it doesn't keep spinning. Now, I'm gonna use my 17 socket and see if it comes off. Look like it didn't give us any trouble. Now, what I'm actually I'm gonna do, I got it loosened up, I'm gonna leave it a couple threads on and if we need more room later I'll take this off. All right, now we can do our tie rod end. This guy has a 21-millimeter nut on the bottom here connected to the knuckle, so I got my impact gun. And the same situation applies here. If you're having trouble getting it off, you can use a wrench and hold the end there and then a wrench on the nut. Looks like we're doing all right, it's stuck in there. So, I'm gonna grab a hammer and get this off. Now, when you do use a hammer, you don't wanna hit directly on the stud because it can damage it. Thread the nut on a couple of threads, so you're hitting the nut instead of the threading itself. From there, you can take the tie rod and out and I like to thread the nut back on just so we don't lose it.Next, we're gonna tackle the upper control arm ball joint to the knuckle. Now, this is a 21-millimeter nut. And it also can be the same case if it starts spinning, use the wrench trick that I mentioned earlier. Now, now that we have the tie rod end out, it's gonna wanna keep rotating. So, when I put this ratchet on, it's really hard to get the leverage we need. So, I'm actually gonna put the tie rod end back into the knuckle without tightening it down just to keep it from moving side to side. I think that'll make our life a little bit easier. So, I'll just put the nut back on a little bit and that way it doesn't move. Now, you can grab your 21 deep socket and I'm gonna use my 3/8 ratchet and get this off. All right. Now, for this one, we're gonna do the same thing we did with the tie rod end and keep this on a couple of threads, and we're gonna hammer this out. Now for this, you don't wanna hammer on the upper control arm here, you don't wanna damage the ball joint at all. So, you wanna hit this knuckle right next to it. All right, so now that we broke that loose, let's grab our tie rod end and take this off, put the nut back on and now we can focus on the upper control arm.All right. So, for this, I'm going to take my pry bar, put it around one of the coils and pull down. That way I can thread the nut back off, put my hand on the spindle and guide it down. Now, before we move any further this is pretty important here. You can see the entire knuckle is shifted down and that's putting a little bit more stress than we're comfortable with on the brake line going to the caliper. So, what you wanna do is grab a bungee strap or something similar like this, we're gonna connect this to the frame and one of the holes and then the other end, we're gonna wrap this around, pull it up to take some of the pressure off and hook it in. That way we have a little bit more slack on the brake line and it's not putting pressure on it.All right, so next up, we're gonna do the bottom strut bolt. Now, this is a 15/16 nut and a 21 millimeter bolt head. I'm holding the bolt head with my wrench, I got my 15/16 so my impact gun. Let's get this off. Now, it looks like we're at the right angle that I can just pull this out but if you're having trouble, you can use a hammer to try to knock it free. And if it gets stuck in there, just grab a screwdriver, put it in and tap it out like a hammer and chisel. All right, this next part is pretty simple. We're at the top of the strut tower, we're gonna get the three nuts off holding it on and then we can bring the entire coil over out. Now, you're gonna grab your 15-millimeter ratcheting wrench is what I'd recommend, one of them that's a little bit longer that you can get more leverage on, it makes life easier. Not a ton of room up here but you can probably get a deep socket and a ratchet in there if that's all you have. All right, so now we can get these three off.All right, so now we're ready to take the entire strut assembly out. Now, I'd recommend having a pry bar on deck for this because lowering this lower control arm can be tough and it's a little tight down here. So, what I like to do is to grab a pry bar, lift it up and put it right underneath of the coil over or the factory strut and I'm gonna pry it out of position. So, you can see that came around, now we can just work it out and it falls right through. Doing that by hand can prove to be pretty difficult. Now we can set this aside.We have the IFP shock from Fox next to our factory strut, I wanna take you through some quick similarities and differences between the two kits. And really this is gonna be night and day. The only thing that is very similar would be the fitment and the quality of parts. The IFP is the internal floating piston that separates the shock oil from high-pressure nitrogen gas chambers to allow for maximum performance over that factory coil over or the factory strut. You're gonna get a night and day difference in ride quality both on and off-road. This uses JM92 advanced suspension fluid that's great at variable temperatures. It makes sure that if you're just driving casually on the road you get a nice comfortable ride, but it can adjust very quickly to some of the high-pressure off-road situations you may be taking your truck to.Now, this is going to also have a variable spring rate or a progressive spring rate that's gonna give you a comfortable ride but also allow it to stiffen up and handle those situations better off-road. Now, this comes with a 2-inch 6061-T6 aluminum body which is gonna be better for cooling that also has a clear anodized body plating. The top hat is a black coated anodize CNC machined billet aluminum which is gonna have precision fitment for your RAM. It also has a 5/8-inch hard chrome plated shaft and a high flow piston with application-specific driving which is what I just mentioned there, kind of goes hand in hand with the IFP. Now, it has redundant seal packing systems. It also uses quite nitrile rubber bushings which are gonna be great for more articulation. So, once you have a lifted truck and again this is good for lifts from 0 or stock, to 2 inches, you're gonna need a shock that is capable of handling greater articulation. And that's what you get here with those advanced bushing systems.One of the big things that will separate this coil lover from your factory strut is the preload ring. Now, as you can see on your strut body or the shaft here, you have threads all the way down from about, you know, 4 inches in to the bottom here. Now, that's gonna allow you to adjust how much preload is set on the spring. Now, preload is essentially how much compression there is on the spring before the weight of the vehicle is put on it. Now, if you adjust this, to bring the spring smaller, you're adding more preload to that. What that essentially does, it gives you a stiffer ride and a more rigid ride. Having that stiffer ride is gonna feel a lot sportier. If that's what you're going for with your truck, you have that ability, or you can adjust it to have less preload and be more bouncy, giving you a more comfortable ride, a more fluid ride. So, you have that ability right there and that obviously is not something you have with the factory strut that is preset non-adjustable. So, right out of the box, Fox has it set to about the neutral range, closer to the factory ride quality. It might be a little stiffer out of the box but you can also again just have that free roam adjustability. And that's a hex screw holding that on, you loosen it up and then you can adjust it from there tighter or looser, up or down.So, those are the big differences between the two kits. Overall this is gonna be outperforming the factory strut both on and off-road. It has a lot of components that are a lot more advanced than factory that can achieve a higher performance, especially at those higher temperatures. All right, so now that we took a closer look at the Fox option versus factory, what do you say we take this and throw it into our truck?All right, so now we have our coil over from Fox, we're gonna set it into place. Now, I've got one of the nuts in my hand, so when I put it to the top of the strut tower, I'm gonna tighten down the nut just a little bit to hold it in place, and then we'll seat it at the bottom. Keep in mind, you will put a washer up at the top, but I'm just gonna use the nut for now, we'll come back at the very end and tighten up the three nuts at the top with the washers. You also wanna take note one of the studs is marked green, that's gonna be your front stud facing outside of the vehicle. So, that's what we're gonna line that up with. So, why don't we slide this guy in and line it up to those holes, putting it through just like that so the studs come through the top. Now, I'm gonna take this nut and just thread it on as much as they can on the front. It's a nylon lock nut, so it will just stop here but at least now it's holding it in. Now, we can do a trick similar to the one we did taking it off, we're just going to pry it forward. I'm gonna take my pry bar and set it underneath. All right, so once you have that seated in there, we can put our bolt through.All right, now when putting your bolt through, you wanna put the bolt head on the same side it was on taking it off, so it's gonna be on the inside here. The only difference is now, this is hard to line up. So, a good idea would be to take a flathead screwdriver, put it through this hole, through the lower control arm and help align it that way so you can slide your bolt through.All right, so I have my flathead in here and I'm gonna pry up to align with the holes while looking through the other side. All right, when you fiddle with it enough, you'll get the bolt started and then you can take a hammer and tap it through. Now we can take the nut and thread it on by hand. Now we can grab our 15/16 socket and our 21-millimeter wrench and tighten down that bolt. All right, so now we're gonna take our tie rod end, take that nut off there. Lift this guy back in the place and throw the tie rod through. That'll help hold this [inaudible 00:13:01] from going side to side. All right, so now we can take our bungee cord or wherever you're using to hold this back up right off, swing this guy around. Now, you wanna pick it up immediately just so you're not putting pressure on it. We're gonna bring this down, drop it into place, I'm gonna use a pry bar to hold it down and then put our nut on the other side.So, I'm gonna put my pry bar right underneath of that strut tower and start bringing it down. Grab your nut and thread it on. Put it on as many as you can. You might have to readjust your pry bar, I try to put it all the way down as far as I can get it hand tight. Now, I'm gonna use my impact gun, an extension, a swivel socket, and my 21-millimeter to go up from underneath to get to our ball joint nut. Now, while I'm putting this on, I'm also gonna pry down with my pry bar up here on the upper control arm to put some pressure on it to keep it from spinning. Now you can take your 21 socket and tighten down your tie rod end. Grab your 17 deep socket and tighten up your sway bar end link.All right, so at this point, we can focus on the top three strut tower nuts. So, we're gonna take this back off because we kept that on there to hold it in place. Make sure you put your washers in place in there and then tighten them back down. So, I'm gonna hit the ones in the back here, we already have our washers on there. Now, I'm gonna grab a 17-millimeter ratcheting wrench to tighten these guys down, but if you have a regular ratchet and socket, whatever you use to remove the old ones, you can use that here as well.Lastly, you wanna reconnect the pushpin clip or this plastic clip here holding on your ABS line, it goes right back into the knuckle. Now, we can grab our torque wrench and torque everything down. First one I'm gonna torque down is our bottom strut bolt, that's gonna be a 15/16 socket, torque down to 100 foot-pounds. Now we can torque down our tie rod nut to 78 foot-pounds. So, now we can set or upper control arm ball joint nut to 70 foot-pounds.All right, so that's gonna wrap this up here. Now, of course, you wanna make sure you're looking at the proper torque specs for your specific model before moving forward with the torque wrench. And of course, you can pick up your spanner wrench separately if you want to adjust your preload, you can bring that collar upward to compress the spring to make it a little bit tighter and stiffer. Bring it down if you wanted to do the opposite and have a loose, more fluid ride. Now if you bought another coil over for your opposite side, you'll just repeat the exact same process over there. So, that's gonna wrap up my review and install for the Fox IFP Coil Over Shock fitting all 0 to 2-inch Lifts on your '14 to '18 RAM without air ride, you can get yours right here at americantrucks.com.
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985-02-020
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Installation Info
Installation Time
(approx) 2 Hours
Difficulty Level:
Light to Moderate mechanical skill required.
Installation Guides
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