Ford Excursion Suspension Upgrade Choices

The Excursion has pretty terrible suspension from the factory, and the 5" lift on mine improved it slightly, but not much.  Ancient leaf spring technology used in trucks and horse carriages since the beginning of time.  It's rough and bumpy on the road, and it's not at all enjoyable off the road, both of which are a problem for me.  A couple years ago we used our previous SUV, a Nissan Armada, to do the magnificent 100mi White Rim Moab bike ride with the family, including our 6mo old baby.  The Armada was amazing for this, an SUV doesn't get much better than the capabilities of the Armada with a great V8, plenty of clearance, true 4wd system with low range, and suspension that works well on and off road.  Fun Fact for everybody, the Armada has a higher tow rating than a Suburban!  Unfortunately the Armada was sold while the wife and I had a downturn in jobs and had to cut back on expenses.  Although we really wanted another Armada, we decided to buy a large toy hauler trailer and as I pointed out in my other blog post, the Excursion was the only 3rd row vehicle capable of pulling it.

I've had my Excursion off road a few times and even with the current 5" lift it's pretty terrible.  The shocks can't handle the weight of this beast and it bottoms out easy and small rocks and washboard causes terrible kick back in the rear end.  I believe what is happening is small impact send the suspension immediately into the thick/stiff overload spring and then it rebounds off the overload and causes a horrible oscillation on and off the overload spring.  This is a common problem with HD trucks, the overload springs kill any true off-road potential, they are made for towing not for off road bumps.  The overload springs have to go if I'm ever going to enjoy this thing off road.

Stock front suspension, what is that like 2" of travel, what was Ford thinking???

Goals for upgraded suspension:

1. Tow my 12,500lb Toy Hauler like a champ
2. Ride like something civilized on the road
3. Tackle medium duty off-road adventures such as White Rim in Moab

The Excursion suspension is pretty terrible, so what can I do about it?  Well, you might have guessed that some sort of air suspension is a must for towing, so you're going to see this in all of my options.  There are other options not listed out there, but after my research these are the options I've seriously considered.  In order from least expensive to most expensive.

1)  Air assist supplemental airbags to support the weight of the trailer.

This is what most people who tow do with trucks.  They bolt on a set of airbags that supplement the factory suspension.  When you're not towing you let most of the air out of them, when you tow you pump some air in to level out your truck.  It works great on stock trucks, but my truck is not stock.  Because of my lift I would have to fabricate mounts for the airbags to attach to make this work.  Also, this does nothing to improve the ride quality of my truck.  It's going to ride exactly the same as before and I won't meet goal #2.  Airbags are also a problem for off-roading.  I've seen multiple people take their trucks off-roading while in Moab and tear the Firestone airbags which are not made for large amounts of articulation.

For a temporary solution while I figure out my long term solution I did however replace my rear factory bump stops with Sumo springs.  They work great for the price and make a big difference while towing with less suspension sag.  They also make bottoming out much more progressive than the stiff factory bump stops.

2) Ford Factory Coil Spring suspension from a 2005+ F250 (junkyard)

As I did more and more research I found this to be a very popular upgrade to older F250's and Excursions.  You get a much better ride from the new generation suspension, and you also get a better turning radius and brake performance from the newer trucks.  It's almost entirely bolt on which is shocking, only a small amount of fab and cutting to pull it off.  One of the hardest parts is finding a donor truck rolling chassis that has all of the components that are not damaged.

The problems I would have with this option is I would be back to close to stock height and have to invest a lot more $ upgrading many of the components to lift it back up to fit 35" tires.  This is a great option for someone wanting to stay close to stock height, but for me the Excursion just doesn't look right with tires smaller than 35" and I'd spend a bit of money and a ton of time to go this route.  And of course I still have to deal with the same issue as option #1.

One note on this, you cannot use your Excursion axles, you must use the axles off the donor truck.  The 2005+ axles are about 3-4" wider and will push your wheels out about 2" on each side.  If you're not a fan of wheels sticking out you may have to purchase new wheels with less offset to compensate.  I already have new wheels, a brand new set of 4.56 gears, and a brand new Auburn locker in mine...this makes this option very unappealing for my case.

3) Carli Suspension King 2.5 Performance 4.5" Lift System (link to Carli)

Carli has some serious guts, because they literally just launched this custom system for the Excursion less than 1 year ago.  Think about that, they just came out with a suspension system for a 12+ year old vehicle that is not made any longer....who does that?  I don't know why they did it, but THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU Carli for coming out with a serious contender for my needs.  Carli made the previous front-runner have competition at a much lower price.

You might be thinking, this is awesome for off-road, but it would stink pulling a 12k lb trailer.  That would definitely be true, except Carli has a solution for that as well.  They make long travel air bags that match with this suspension to provide not only an amazing off road package, but one that can pull serious loads as well.  This is the most thought out and custom package for an Excursion.

Carli still uses leaf springs, which is a bit of a downer, BUT, they are custom made by Deaver who is famous for making leaf springs that perform better than can be imagined from a leaf.  And the cost of leaf's is much lower than a complete air bag system.

If you want the ultimate in off-road performance this is the setup and it's one of my top choices.  The Carli setup with airbags is about $7700.  For a leaf sprung system that is really steep, but you have to consider that about $2400 of that cost is for very high end King 2.5 Shocks that are going to perform better than anything else you could possibly bolt onto an Excursion without custom fab.  If you've never put high end aftermarket suspension on a truck you don't know what you're missing...it can be a night and day difference from OEM.

4) Kelderman Air Ride System (link to Kelderman)

If money was no object, this is what I would have purchased a year ago.  BUT, at more than $11,000 for this amazing full 4 corner 4-link air suspension system, that's a tough bill to swallow (and save up for).  The cost is pretty crazy and hard to justify, but for towing and ride comfort this should be the ultimate setup.  The costs add up very fast: Rear End $3250, Front End $3095, Remote Reservoir Shocks $1500, and then to get the most out of it you need a $3500 4-corner control system.  That adds up to a whopping $11,345!  OUCH!  :(

Another benefit of an air system is you have on-board air tanks to power air tools and fill up tires.  This is a big benefit for our hobbies of mountain biking and dirt bike riding.  Sometimes I feel like I'm constantly filling up tires with a bike pump.

The crazy thing is, for as popular as Kelderman is with all the media hype and tv coverage they have received.  I cannot find a single honest review of the ride quality of the system.  It seems like people who buy these systems only buy them for show trucks and they never talk about how it rides.  I've talked to my local off-road shop who has installed a few of these and they've told me that it doesn't ride as good as I might think it should and told me to think hard before dropping $10k on this system.  Well that's not very encouraging, is it?  How do you spend this much on a system you aren't 100% confident in how it's going to perform?  Theoretically the Kelderman should be the best system hands down, but in the real world...where is the proof?

Look, NO LEAF SPRINGS!!!  That's awesome.

UGH!!  Decisions...decisions...  I don't know...

I'll throw this out there, if either Kelderman or Carli want's to provide a wholesale discount to me in exchange for an in depth review and documentation of the install process, that could win me over!  I think both of these companies NEED some independent 3rd party reviews by people like me if they are going to talk people in to spending $7000+ on their systems.  I wish there were a way to demo these two systems before purchase, but I'm just going to have to bit the bullet and go for it.

How to experiment on the "cheap"

What I might end up doing is only installing the rear end of either Kelderman or Carli which is what causes the most problems with the overload springs.  Of course I would upgrade the shocks on the front to match the rear.  This would cut the costs of either almost in 1/2.  And with the Kelderman the expensive air control system is not a requirement which cuts a huge expense out of the system.  You don't get fancy load leveling and height adjustment, but honestly that isn't a huge deal.  You just manually add/remove air when you tow.  Going this route makes the Kelderman cheaper than the Carli rear end because of the expensive King shocks that make up the biggest cost of the Carli setup.

This makes me lean towards installing a rear-end only Kelderman, but I haven't made up my mind.

UPDATE, I came across this excellent blog on Expedition Portal and the owner Chris went with an Old Man Emu suspension system which was significantly less money than the two I'm looking at.  If you're on a budget and not towing big loads like I am this would be great.  This is a must read Excursion build, I'm going to steal some ideas here:  https://expeditionportal.com/full-size-overland-the-excursion-part-two/