nivomat shocks??

[Russell Ashley]

Anyone ever heard of them? Getting ready to replace the shocks on my 2002 Suburban and found out that it has the ZW7 level ride suspension and it has this type of shock absorbers on the rear. Fine, except they cost over $500 for two of them. I love this Suburban but keep getting thoughts of selling it and getting a pick up truck, so don't want to spend that much if I can just put some good heavy duty shocks on it and it would be OK. It's a two wheel drive 1500 LT model that never tows or hauls heavy loads. I can buy a good set of regular shocks for about $100 so would rather do that if I can get by with it and be satisfied with the ride and handling. Looking on the net, some of the nivomat shocks ad's suggest replacing the springs too, but I will not do that. Any advice or suggestions? Do I really need those kind of shocks?

[Palf70Step]

I used Monroe 34817 Gas-Magnum Truck Shocks on my trucks so I would assume they would be as good for a Suburban. I have not heard of the others you mentioned, but assume they are so pricey because of the self leveling thing.

[truckdude239]

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?m...2F152275673901 i used these on my Tahoe they seem okay so far mine had the z55 level ride with rear air shocks mine where all blown out and leaking and my air pump was blown so i used a conversion kit

[greasemonkey]

I did a lot of research on this a while back since my Tahoe came factory with nivomat shocks. The ZW7 smoothride suspension code coupled with G65 (I think) means you have the self leveling nivomat shocks. They're giant black shocks on later trucks and reportedly blue on some earlier ones. The problem you have is, the nivomat shock supports some of the load of the vehicle and the spring is physically smaller and weaker than a standard spring. To do the job right, you would need to change springs if you went to a standard shock, which is what I did. You may be able to install standard shocks and leave the springs, but I can't imagine it would ride well at all and it would probably droop in the rear.
Now (supposedly) there is also a possibility of having the ZW7 code and still have a standard spring and shock. 99-02 seems to be in a category of its own while 03-07 appear to be a little more standardized.