Went with a set of Rancho 5000's.. Have the back on, still waiting for the front (no one stocked them that was open on a weekend.. Going to try two of the area 4x4 shops tomorrow, or have to order the fronts...
The factory shock on one sie (drivers I think it was) had lost almost all compression resistance.. the other is weak but still feels a little like a soft car shock. now when you hit a large bump (tried a speed bump) the back end has the hard/sharp hit of a 4x4, not the soft recoil of a luxury car
The front must be worse than I thought.. With the back fixed, it has a definete 'snowplow' going into curves at road speed from the back staying level and the front shocks dropping on the outside of the curve..
Decided to go with Rancho for a couple reasons:
- Past experience
- Rancho has always seemed to be a good 4x shock
- Availability, other than Monroe, everything else would be special order around here
- Lifetime warranty is always a nice selling point
The local shop has the current '03 Rancho book, and it DOESNT show the S10 at all newer than '93
So we took the Monroe book, looked up the size specs for the Monroe chock, then looked up the individual specs on the Rancho to match a set of shocks.. The stupid part is once you do that, if you go to the reverse lookup and see what a 5123/5124 fit.... "up to '03 S10/Sonoma".. They have it in the reverse lookup, but in direct application their catalog SKIPS the S series after 93 completely...