Mild Off Roading Harmful?

jro909 · April 7, 2010

i work frequently on various farms and i often times have to drive(slowly) over uneven terrain or furrows...or often times park on mushy uneven terrain...my question is, does this screw up the suspension at all? i'm talking very slow driving over the bumps and divets...kind of a odd question, but it came to mind when i had to park my truck today halfway in a ditch with the truck weight leaning on the passenger side...

Crazy Canuck · April 7, 2010

i work frequently on various farms and i often times have to drive(slowly) over uneven terrain or furrows...or often times park on mushy uneven terrain...my question is, does this screw up the suspension at all? i'm talking very slow driving over the bumps and divets...kind of a odd question, but it came to mind when i had to park my truck today halfway in a ditch with the truck weight leaning on the passenger side...

I wouldn't worry about it. As long as you are using judgement and keeping your speed in check you shouldn't have a problem. I wouldn't worry about the parking thing either. If you park it that way every day, eventually that side would wear out faster but I would think it would take quite a while.

Cheers,

Spurshot · April 7, 2010

If you aren't bottoming the suspension or exercising it at high rates (high speed over bumps), you aren't doing any undue wear on the truck.

jro909 · April 7, 2010

If you aren't bottoming the suspension or exercising it at high rates (high speed over bumps), you aren't doing any undue wear on the truck.

what do you mean by bottoming out? as in like an elephant in the bed of a half ton while parked on an incline? because i make sure the trucks empty minus a few beer cans

Silverado4x4 · April 7, 2010

Rule of thumb, if your ass comes off the seat or end up sitting in the passenger seat your going too fast.

ColoradoSkiCountry · April 8, 2010

Might need an alignment every 15,000 miles or so, but other than that.. you should be good.

jro909 · April 8, 2010

Rule of thumb, if your ass comes off the seat or end up sitting in the passenger seat your going too fast.

d3athsong · April 8, 2010

Your should be fine doing what your doing. I do the same with my truck and so far no ill effects, and do it alot more with our designated 98 chev "farm truck" and its suspension and alignment are still good. And I dont necessarily drive slow with either.

sc4808 · April 9, 2010

Suspension can handle some pretty serious abuse, the only issue can be body squeaks and rattles, but with that being said, my 03 Sierra has 170K with thousands of Off-Road miles and I am not gentle with it and have had no ill effects at all.

AgDoctor · April 9, 2010

i make the general lee look like it's driving miss daisy. had to replace a couple ball joints, a wheel bearing, 2 shocks, couple brake discs, some new leaf springs, two new quarter panels, part of a front bumper, fix a tailgate, 2 new front fender liners, lost the air dam, new hub cover, 4 new valve stems, slashed a tire, broke the hangers on some nerf bars, dropped a couple cylinders, and ..................so far so good. give it hell!

Nytemare · April 9, 2010

I have off-roaded my 2wd truck man and bounced out of my seat. I still track straight and my shocks are only now starting to become soft...but that's 65Kmiles of wear...I would expect the shocks to be going bad now.

BruceW · April 9, 2010

Its a truck, use it like one. I certainly would not own a truck that could not handle the off road use you describe.

Yesterday mine was bouncing through rough, wet fields spinning all four tires pulling a 8 thousand pound trailer. I spun the tires for over 200 yards then bounced through the next 150 or so.

TRCM · April 9, 2010

One thing to consider, when doing that (as well as when driving normally), try to avoid hitting the brakes hard while hitting bumps.

Braking will put stress on your drivetrain and suspension, which is normal, but consider that stress being there AND you crashing into a bump at the same time. Or you are braking and you hit a bump, and the tire bounces up and loses some of the weight on it which lets the tire lock up, then you come off the bump with the brakes still on and that corner of the suspension is still locked up.....you can imagine the stress it feels. Will just break things quicker.

That being said, if I have to stop, I am going to brake, but if I have a choice to wait a second longer to start braking to avoid doing so over a bump or in a pothole, I will.