I bought a used Suburban a couple of weeks ago trading in the older 2001 Suburban we used to tow the camper. On all my SUVs I have front end guards and I bought a Ranch Hand Legend grille guard, now it is not the full bumper replacement, but it is much heavier than the regular grille guards most people have. It weighs 105 lbs.. My question is, I put it on on Sat and I feel that it dropped the front end quite a bit. Mind you this was a one owner that had a very long commute and so this 3 year old burb has 82K on the clock, so new shocks and struts may be in the near future. My burb has the ZW7 code that shows it to have the Premium Smooth Ride: indicated by the RPO code ZW7. This suspension uses a conventional suspension in the front, but the rear uses a self contained, self leveling Nivomat shock in the rear. ZW7 equipped trucks come with a softer spring in the rear since the Nivomat self leveling system does some of the work or holding the truck up. Replacing a ZW7 Nivomat unit with a standard shock requires also replacing the spring. Otherwise the truck will sag in the rear and have a much harsher ride and potentially dangerous handling.

So what would you do to correct, just buy new front struts? I can't find any heavy duty ones.....Do you think that the struts could be just warn out in the front with 80K on them, it does bounce and feel like they are bad, but since labor is higher on struts I want to do this right. Buy the HD ones, if they can be found? Or just stick to the OEM spec ones?

Thanks in advance for the answers!