Here are my impressions after two days of daily driving on empty and on city streets and the highway: much improved ride.
The harshness and bounciness that I was experiencing with the tricked rear oem air bags and the OME 60004 rear shocks is now gone. It rides much more stable, bounces a lot less, and takes street bumps much better.
Since I have E rated Nito Ridge Grapplers at 38 psi, the ride is still not as plush as stock, but I'm happy with the improvements. My daily commute takes me through some old uneven cement streets and now the ride is acceptable. It was so bouncy and harsh before.
The previous setup was my fault for pairing up digressive Bilstein 6112 shocks up front and progressive OME 60004 shocks in the rear. I do believe that my ride got worse when I replaced the stock oem rear shocks with the OME 60004 shocks. Bad combination of mismatched shocks.
So, if you are wondering if the rear shocks digressive Icon 56550s (extended travel 17" compressed, 28.5" extended) work well with Bilstein 6112s, they do. Coils are Dobinson C59-675V are got them used (or pre-owned as dealers like to say).
Also, with the rear air bag trick, I had about 1.5" of lift and I was at about 22.5" hub to fender in the rear (+/- 1/4" depending on the day of the week and if I had the driver's side lean that day).
Now I'm sitting at about 23.5" hub to fender (+/- 1/4") in the rear. If I park one way, I sometimes get the rear driver's side lean at 23.25" and 23.75" in the rear passenger side. Sometimes the driver's side is 23.25" and the passenger is 23.5", so these hub to fender measurements change on a daily basis, but let's just say that I'm at 23.5".
This means I gained about 1" from the tricked air bags. If you assume that the stock rear hub to fender height was 21", then I'm raised about 2.5" from original stock height. This is a little more than I wanted, so I'm surprised that the coils raised me 2.5" in the rear. I was expecting closer to 1.75" to 2". Maybe because I'm empty right now (zero extra weight in the rear).
If you assume that the front stock hub to fender height was 20.25", I'm at 22.5", so I'm lifted about 2.25" in the front. I have about 3/4" to 1" rake, but that's on empty. Once I add some weight, I'll close the gap for a more level stance. Also, the Bilstein 6112s are not on the highest notch, so I can probably adjust them if I wanted to, but I'm not going to do that.
Things to do:
1. Install the Resz Fab non-adjustable offset and extended (by 1/8" to 3/16") rear lower links. Backordered since 11/27/2019 and still not here (1/04/2020). Cancelled order in mid March 2020 due to no shipping in sight.
2. Figure out what to do about the rear bump stops. I'm still running the stock GX470 4.25" bump stops. They seem to fit well for now, but I need to install the rear lower links and then test it offroad to see if the bumpstop is working or not.
3. Get alignment after the rear lower links are installed and tested offroad. [Did alignment already after doing the coil conversion even though rear lower links are not in.]
I still fit in a standard 8-foot garage door, so that was good.
