Anyone with any of the Icon Vehicle Dynamics suspensions kits?

jflan23 · June 23, 2021

Looking at a stage 3, anyone with any reviews? It would be on my AT4, only looking for 1-2” of additional lift but want way better performance.

thanks!

EngLab · June 23, 2021

They have become crazy expensive and service is non-existant. I had a 2009 1500 Sierra w/Icon's on it and it was great. I put them on 2 more Sierras after that (2018 1500 & 2500). Both of those vehicles had shocks that leaked (one after just a few miles plus it badly stained new pavers on my driveway). Icon would not send me a replacement shock on either incident. I had to actually drive up to the factory, wait a few hours to have it rebuilt and then drive the 2 hours back home. It was a real pain and could of been taken care of by pre-paying for a new shock and getting refunded when they received the faulty one back.

I am a big fan of their billet adj. Delta Joint upper control arms. Never had an issue and the design is great. If you want to run OEM rims, you can do it w/most Icon UCA's.

I have Fox 2.5 DSC and this is now my 4th set. They have more adjustments than Icon CDC's that has only 10 settings (found myself often between setting on Icon rears). You can adjust High & Low speed compression with DSC. Also, Fox service is night and day difference from Icon. I found Icon has changed over the years... to big for their britches w/crazy pricing for unreliable products in my experience.

NOTE: I owned a 2020 Tacoma I was building last year and noticed Icon had gone to a new way of locking their spring pre-load ring. No longer do they do a 2nd locking ring on top of the pre-load ring or even a pinch ring.... they use a single ring and the bolt actually digs INTO the shock threading. I ended up selling the Stage 10 kit to another Taco owner. And recently heard he ripped those shocks apart on his last 4WD trip... not good.

w/

Edited June 24, 2021 by EngLab

Chevy202004 · June 23, 2021

I have the Icon stage 2 kit on my 2020 Chevy 1500 LTZ. I have 3000 miles on the kit and love it. I also put Deaver Leaf packs in the back. But on the road it feels pretty nice. Dirt roads is where you really feel the difference. If you are not going to use your truck off road I would just go with the fox 2.0s. Also the amount of lift you get depends on what engine you have as well. I have the 3.0 and the icons lifted it around 2.5 inches. All the numbers they have are from the 5.3.

bluemonstercali · June 25, 2021

anyone with the stage 1 experience. My elevation needs the oem 2" lift and for the price of the oem kit i was looking at Icon vs Bilstein. I was told Bilstein is great but a little harsh. considering it will never off road just a daily driver

EngLab · June 26, 2021

20 hours ago, bluemonstercali said:

anyone with the stage 1 experience. My elevation needs the oem 2" lift and for the price of the oem kit i was looking at Icon vs Bilstein. I was told Bilstein is great but a little harsh. considering it will never off road just a daily driver

Icon Stage One was the first kit I ever did on a 2009 Sierra 1500. It was great until the factory ball joints went out at after 20k miles w/spring pre-load/height being set at Icon's factory setting. Don't cheap out and get a decent aftermarket UCA w/whatever kit you do, your ball joints/tires will thank you. A good quality "adjustable" UCA will run over a grand, but worth it in savings down the road. Some people will disagree with this, but I personally never found a vehicle of mine (GM, Ford, Toyota, etc.) that didn't benefit on an alignment rack from aftermarket UCA's when installing coil-overs... even with a mild height increase.

I agree with the statement about the Fox 2.0's being a good go-to shock for a mild daily driver. The only down side is they need to be fully removed from the vehicle to adjust spring pre-load because the adjustment ring is located at the bottom of the strut. If you are just going to leave them at the factory set height, then you don't have to worry about that

The Bilstein 5100 takes the guess work out of front ride height. You can find tons of info on here and around the Internet on any Bilstein product. Another newer option is the new Eibach Pro-Truck. They have copied the Bilstein 6112 idea and I have yet to read a negative review about them and the price point is unbeatable.

Edited June 26, 2021 by EngLab

Flatblack83 · June 28, 2021

I had the stage one kit on my 19 last year , it drove decent but still too firm. I sent the coilovers back, they converted em to stage 4. That's long travel with the compression adjuster. Huge difference..!! Now the stage 4 has tubular control arms and rear reservoir adjustable compression shocks. Here's 3.25 up front and 2 rear with 35s.

Couper Harrison · September 12, 2021

On 6/27/2021 at 8:28 PM, Flatblack83 said:

I had the stage one kit on my 19 last year , it drove decent but still too firm. I sent the coilovers back, they converted em to stage 4. That's long travel with the compression adjuster. Huge difference..!! Now the stage 4 has tubular control arms and rear reservoir adjustable compression shocks. Here's 3.25 up front and 2 rear with 35s.

I'm putting the extended travel coilovers with the DSC in soon, what compression setting do you run on the road/highway? What about dirt?

Flatblack83 · October 1, 2021

On 9/12/2021 at 2:46 PM, Couper Harrison said:

I'm putting the extended travel coilovers with the DSC in soon, what compression setting do you run on the road/highway? What about dirt?

Been running them on 2 front and rear. I have them turned up to 3.5 up front so they tend to be firmer.

Davidholt89 · May 14, 2025

This has been the worst, most expensive, and frustrating experience I’ve ever had! I spend $7,000 on a new stage 5 suspension kit that was installed by a professional mechanic. A little over a year and 7k miles (almost all of which were road miles) later everything I bought from Icon was leaking or had failed! This includes rear and upper control arms, delta joints, ball joints, seals, front coilovers/suspension, rear shocks I mean everything. They informed me the warranty was over and they would only rebuild the shocks as a courtesy. )I had to spend another $8,000 to replace the things that had broken because all of icons parts failed.) They told me it would take 3 to 5 days for the rebuild and them to send me back the shocks. Three and a half weeks later they sent the shocks to the wrong address, when my mechanic finally received them he informed me how disappointed in the quality of the rebuild he was. Said (I’ve never seen anything like them) Oil was still leaking from the shocks, seals had not been replaced and the bearings were unusable. He informed me he could not put this suspension back on the vehicle due to safety and quality concerns. The mechanic had to send the suspension to his rebuild mechanic for an additional at least $500. That’s $15,500 I am now into a $6,000 icon stage 5 suspension kit. John Quinn the icon manager or whatever he is wouldn’t not respond to my emails for days at a time and the only reason I was able to get the horribly rebuild suspension back in 3 weeks instead of heavens knows how long was because I had to call and complain to them every week about how long it was taking after they told me a it would take a week. Quality and service with this company is atrocious and I cannot recommend enough to stay as far away from Icon Vehicle Dynamics as possible. You’ll be broke and out of a car by the time you decide icon was the wrong decision. Seriously stay away from these guys. Ask anyone on Facebook or another forum and they will tell you the exact same thing. Wish I would have done more research before making this costly mistake.