Kevin McNulty
Former Editor, Mud Life
The Dodge 1500 truck has been a staple machine of four-wheelers since the early ’90s, and it continues to meet demands of off-road enthusiasts and hardcore racers even with independent front suspension. The truck is a good platform for trail rigs and desert prerunners. We had the opportunity to bolt a high-end Safari suspension kit onto a ’10 base-model Ram. The suspension turned the mild-mannered, Hemi-powered, base-priced truck into a tough and dependable prerunner race rig.
The Safari suspension system from RamSpeedUSA is a buildable kit for the 12-ton IFS pickup, and it is available in four stages and with a number of shock options. We hung out at T&J Performance Center in Orange, California, one day while the suspension was installed on the truck. The guys at T&J are heavily into off-road racing, so their technicians are highly skilled at building and repairing race vehicles.
The factory upper A-arm is only made of stamped, pressed, and rolled steel. We are not sure how much abuse the OEM part would take off-road, but it doesn’t look like much.
Once the kit was installed we hit the highway and trails for testing. After a day of blasting through dirt trails, wheeling over rocky washes, and putting a number of highway miles under the truck, we found ourselves impressed with the well-engineered suspension. RamSpeedUSA didn’t cut any corners in the design, the building, and the grade of material used in the suspension, which was evident in its on- and off-road drivability. The suspension is well mannered on the highway and greatly improved the truck’s off-road performance.
The new A-arms and knuckles are highly engineered and made from 316- and 18-inch 4130 chromoly steel.
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