NOVA RHO

[Minarets]

Best way I describe a PW is a 3/4 ton jeep wrangler and the RHO is a WRX pickup. I’ll miss aspects of the PW but really just like to mix it up every few years. If you keep the PW I could give some suggestions to make notable improvements.

I want the ride quality and speed of the RHO…and handling.

I love and will miss my PW Ram boxes, looks and stance (obviously the RHO looks great as well), and capabilities off road. Love the limited slip.

 

[John123]

I want the ride quality and speed of the RHO…and handling.

I love and will miss my PW Ram boxes, looks and stance (obviously the RHO looks great as well), and capabilities off road. Love the limited slip.

The ride quality on the RHO has me a little divided. Most modes the shocks are so soft I can easily bottom it out on something like a large speed hump. It does some things great and sport mode helps the softness considerably. I had adjustable king oe series on my PW and it had far better rebound control. Power of course goes to the RHO. Especially after 37’s the PW felt pretty sluggish. Both great but dissimilar trucks. RHO’s seating position, windshield, hood slope, telescopic wheel and ride quality atleast relative to the PW make it feel car like to me, a good and bad thing depending on what you like.

 

[TheGhost_ST]

you are definitely not going to bottom the suspension out in this thing going over anything around town! with 13-14" of total travel front and rear respectively. it might feel that way becasue of the way the suspension feels in this truck you would have to hit something pretty substantial at a good speed to do some harm!

 

[John123]

you are definitely not going to bottom the suspension out in this thing going over anything around town! with 13-14" of total travel front and rear respectively. it might feel that way becasue of the way the suspension feels in this truck you would have to hit something pretty substantial at a good speed to do some harm!

Well I’ll have to respectfully disagree. I know what bump stops feel like and I 100% found the bump stops several times already, repeatedly on the same speed humps that my PW and kings shook off. Not bumps, but the large flat humps. A controlled environment I could do over and over at varying speeds and varying drive modes. The only setting where it didn’t bottom at around 20mph was sport. Powerwagon would smoothly do it at 25mph and not bottom. All other drive modes and it hits the bumps hard and to be honest has terrible rebound control so it continues to bounce up and down several times after. Even my driveway transition out to the road gets the rho bouncing around as if there was no dampening at all if not in sport.
All shock settings other than sport feel the same to me. If somebody wants to say they are different that’s fine, but I can’t perceive it. Sport is noticeably different but I would have expected 3-4 distinctly different suspension behaviors rather than 2. Not really complaining I still like the truck a lot but I was surprised by this. I wasn’t exactly thrashing it on my test rides to be aware before hand, so I think it helpful info to share. And no, there is nothing wrong with shocks.

 

[RAM-Ranch-MT]

Congrats and welcome! I may be able to touch on the suspension nuances you have been noticing. I think what you are feeling is the stiffness of the shocks rather than the shocks being too soft and actually hitting the bump stops. I have witnessed this It feels like you are hitting the bump stops but just how the shocks are tuned.

From a shock building and tuning standpoint , its very tough to build a shock that performs well at low speeds (rock crawling and speed bumps) to high speed (pre running, baja, whoops and jumping). So with this truck being a wide body high speed desert truck tuned the shocks for higher speed. This comes with trade offs, those being its a stiffer ride at low speeds but shines in a big way when you ramp up speed. Im personally a big fan of how it rides at all speeds.

I have caught massive air in these trucks and didnt even come close to bottoming out on the bump stops.

Tldr: your power wagon was a much softer suspension tuned for lower speeds and took low speed bumps more smoothly where the rho suspension is tuned for mid-high speed offroading and more stiffly sprung. Rho has 5" more travel too. Try out some higher speed bumps and let us know!

Anyways, happy to have you here!

 

[BackinaRam]

Very interesting to hear that. My first thought is there is something wrong with your shocks/suspension since I had Kings (Carli Pintop) on a '17 2500 and prefer the Bilstein set up on the RHO (and I loved the Kings).

 

[TheGhost_ST]

yeah if you hit the bumps going over a speed bump you definitely have something wrong with your suspension!!

 

[John123]

Congrats and welcome! I may be able to touch on the suspension nuances you have been noticing. I think what you are feeling is the stiffness of the shocks rather than the shocks being too soft and actually hitting the bump stops. I have witnessed this It feels like you are hitting the bump stops but just how the shocks are tuned.

From a shock building and tuning standpoint , its very tough to build a shock that performs well at low speeds (rock crawling and speed bumps) to high speed (pre running, baja, whoops and jumping). So with this truck being a wide body high speed desert truck tuned the shocks for higher speed. This comes with trade offs, those being its a stiffer ride at low speeds but shines in a big way when you ramp up speed. Im personally a big fan of how it rides at all speeds.

I have caught massive air in these trucks and didnt even come close to bottoming out on the bump stops.

Tldr: your power wagon was a much softer suspension tuned for lower speeds and took low speed bumps more smoothly where the rho suspension is tuned for mid-high speed offroading and more stiffly sprung. Rho has 5" more travel too. Try out some higher speed bumps and let us know!

Anyways, happy to have you here!

*It feels like your husband is punching you in the face, but really he’s just giving you butterfly kisses., so get back to the kitchen*

Gentleman. What I stated above is anecdotal, but fact. There is no mistaking a bump stop when you run out of travel. I am not embellishing my experience for some odd sake of making my own truck or yours sound bad. I was giving someone in a similar situation (PW->RHO) some honest feedback as this particular matter stood out as surprising and unexpected to me.

OEM PW’s do have very soft and cheap bilstein 4600 style shocks and springs tuned much softer than a typical 2500. My PW had adjustable king 2.5’s on it. Were I to set those kings manually on the softest setting, it would blow through the travel and hit the bumpstops. Blowing through travel and bouncing up and down is not stiffness in anything. The secondary and tertiary body motions alone in most drive modes are very unsettling. Even with soft suspension tuning there is no need or excuse for uncontrolled rebound.

The one aspect I can agree upon here is tuning suspension for multiple environments and drive style is difficult. A difficulty largely solved by special suspension features and/or electronics adjusting it based on sensors, speeds, pressures or user inputs. Some features RHO possesses making this topic puzzling and worth my time to call attention to it for a prospective buyer.

I know many have jumped their trucks and bombed around in the dirt. Thumbs up, I hope to do the same when an opportunity presents. But I stand by this statement; the RHO suspension tuning (excluding sport drive mode or sport suspension setting) at speeds under 25mph is absurdly soft with almost no compression or rebound control which I feel is best suited to Jeep style 4x4 crawling.

I’d personally like Auto to be Rock, Sport to be Auto, something stiffer to be Sport and I’ll leave a hopeful assumption Baja has it right for high speed dirt but I can’t speak to that yet.

Apologies for the diatribe, no hurt feelings, but you’ll have to trust me I didn’t daydream a run-in with my bumpstops.

 

[TheGhost_ST]

i don't know about anyonw else, i'm not saying you imagined anything... but i am saying if you hit a speed bump , even a really big one at 50mph or less ( and probably faster) and you hit the bumps something is wrong with your truck!

 

[John123]

Fair enough, I’ll ask service to check it out.

 

[RAM-Ranch-MT]

Fair enough, I’ll ask service to check it out.

cool, so you are bottoming out your long travel suspension truck at low speeds on speed bumps and know for a fact you are hitting bump stop. Everyone telling you it isnt normal. Sounds like the suspension isnt working right. Take it in.

Not sure about the ramblings about punching wives or kitchens and what not, but that was hard to read. hope you get it sorted bud and your wife is safe.

 

[tjams]

Nice! And welcome. I have had my RHO since last June and I still can't believe it every time I see it in my driveway. Love that thing. I had been looking at RHOs for a couple of months and then one day I parked next to a white one when I was getting dinner. It was the first time I had seen one in person. I was blown away. They look so much more impressive in person than they do online. Bought mine the next day. I wound up going with Hydro Blue because that was what was on the lot.

 

[tjams]

If you're looking for a loud exhaust, I'm super happy with the aFe Vulcan. It's cheap, built well, and sounds great.

I'm in the camp that an engine is going to sound like what the engine sounds like, there's only so much sound tweaking they can do with an exhaust system. At the end of the day, two different exhausts with similar flow rates (amount of mufflers/resonators) are going to sound identical to each other to 99.9% of the population. Until the day I own a Ferrari, I'm not going to piss money away on $3,000 exhaust systems.

I have been browsing after-market exhaust systems for awhile now. So far this one is my favorite, even over more expensive systems, based on listening to sound recordings online. Sounds like you think the improvement over stock was worth the expense, yes?

 

[Wrinkled_Donut]

I have been browsing after-market exhaust systems for awhile now. So far this one is my favorite, even over more expensive systems, based on listening to sound recordings online. Sounds like you think the improvement over stock was worth the expense, yes?

Absolutely! It is a bit droney, so if you spend a ton of time on the highway and that would bother you, you might want something with a resonator. Other than that, I love the exhaust. It sounds so good in person. I get a lot of compliments on it.

 

[John123]

cool, so you are bottoming out your long travel suspension truck at low speeds on speed bumps and know for a fact you are hitting bump stop. Everyone telling you it isnt normal. Sounds like the suspension isnt working right. Take it in.

Not sure about the ramblings about punching wives or kitchens and what not, but that was hard to read. hope you get it sorted bud and your wife is safe.

Concentrate and I’ll explain it more simply. Strangers offering unsolicited opinions on my experience have no merit. I wasn’t asking if anyone else had the same experience or attempting to find validation.
I was giving my experience based opinion to somebody asking how I liked the truck compared to a PW since they were in a similar situation. You may offer them a counter opinion but don’t tell me I’m wrong or that if I’m not wrong then my truck is broken. What a poor assessment. Your inability to comprehend the rest of the post sounds like the only real issue at hand.
I was actually attempting to curtail the topic because I know what is happening with the truck, with this suspension sidebar and the outcome if i did take it to service. The truck is new. There is no service code. It’s not bent broken or leaking. Carry on.
It’s a commonly referenced issue, whether you’re perceptive enough to realize in your own truck also is no interest to me. This forum itself has several references to extremely soft and bouncy shocks. Terms like “bouncy” are not synonymous for quality suspension be it trucks, sports/race cars, motorcycles or mountain bikes. At lower speeds, not in sport mode, the rho has poor shock control. For $70k in 2026; I’m not upset and feel the truck does more right than wrong.
The idea that Ram didn’t nail the shock tuning at all speeds and all settings seems to strike a cord here. It’s not an infallible vehicle and saying the truth isn’t meant to offend your high opinion of it. And try not to conflate low speed compression and tuning with high speed compression and tuning because the “I jump my truck” and accompanying image does nothing to refute my statement or bolster yours. If this post feels contentious, it’s a reflection.

 

[John123]

Nice! And welcome. I have had my RHO since last June and I still can't believe it every time I see it in my driveway. Love that thing. I had been looking at RHOs for a couple of months and then one day I parked next to a white one when I was getting dinner. It was the first time I had seen one in person. I was blown away. They look so much more impressive in person than they do online. Bought mine the next day. I wound up going with Hydro Blue because that was what was on the lot.

Thanks. That’s a lot like how I ended up with white but I’m good with it. Though my son would have loved it had the blue been available. Just the forge blue which looked almost black to me on a cloudy day.

 

[Chris3058]

Checking in from northern Virginia (regrettably). Moved out of a ‘22 Power Wagon Level 3 to a RHO Level 0. To sound like a broken record, I dig it so far just need to fix the exhaust, even momma clowns on it. Added rokblocks flaps and RB30 steps. A near future bed cover, tint, and exhaust will call it complete unless I stumble across some OEM beadlocks at the right time as I’m a little fatigued by the black wheels that have found their way on all my vehicles for the last decade.
Seen here in the wild on an excursion to Trader Joe’s and Petco. Were it not for the 500+ hp and 35” mud tires I may not have made it . Anyways glad to see a solid forum for these trucks, last time I had that was my Tacoma days.

View attachment 24352

Nice!

 

[John123]

Absolutely! It is a bit droney, so if you spend a ton of time on the highway and that would bother you, you might want something with a resonator. Other than that, I love the exhaust. It sounds so good in person. I get a lot of compliments on it.

I looked into it some. Probably my favorite for design as it has some of the fewest joints and you don’t have to sawzall the OEM. But I wish they offered a version with a resonator or small muffler. I wanted to like the AWE but it looks like a leaky nightmare if not installed perfectly.

 

[rtfd333]

Concentrate and I’ll explain it more simply. Strangers offering unsolicited opinions on my experience have no merit. I wasn’t asking if anyone else had the same experience or attempting to find validation.
I was giving my experience based opinion to somebody asking how I liked the truck compared to a PW since they were in a similar situation. You may offer them a counter opinion but don’t tell me I’m wrong or that if I’m not wrong then my truck is broken. What a poor assessment. Your inability to comprehend the rest of the post sounds like the only real issue at hand.
I was actually attempting to curtail the topic because I know what is happening with the truck, with this suspension sidebar and the outcome if i did take it to service. The truck is new. There is no service code. It’s not bent broken or leaking. Carry on.
It’s a commonly referenced issue, whether you’re perceptive enough to realize in your own truck also is no interest to me. This forum itself has several references to extremely soft and bouncy shocks. Terms like “bouncy” are not synonymous for quality suspension be it trucks, sports/race cars, motorcycles or mountain bikes. At lower speeds, not in sport mode, the rho has poor shock control. For $70k in 2026; I’m not upset and feel the truck does more right than wrong.
The idea that Ram didn’t nail the shock tuning at all speeds and all settings seems to strike a cord here. It’s not an infallible vehicle and saying the truth isn’t meant to offend your high opinion of it. And try not to conflate low speed compression and tuning with high speed compression and tuning because the “I jump my truck” and accompanying image does nothing to refute my statement or bolster yours. If this post feels contentious, it’s a reflection.

Mine does the same on certain speed bumps. I daily drive in custom mode which I’ve set as essentially just all sport but quicker to get to on start up, just one click to the right. Never happens in sport but when I put it in Baja to have some fun, I find it very odd how it bottoms out on my neighborhood speed bumps. I’m due for an oil change soon and will have Koons check it out. Interested to hear what you find if you have yours looked at too.

I’m also in Nova — Centreville. Maybe our speed bumps are built different?!

 

[John123]

Mine does the same on certain speed bumps. I daily drive in custom mode which I’ve set as essentially just all sport but quicker to get to on start up, just one click to the right. Never happens in sport but when I put it in Baja to have some fun, I find it very odd how it bottoms out on my neighborhood speed bumps. I’m due for an oil change soon and will have Koons check it out. Interested to hear what you find if you have yours looked at too.

I’m also in Nova — Centreville. Maybe our speed bumps are built different?!

Koons just sells trucks without shocks that’s our problem lol. It’s a commonly referenced behavior in the truck. I promise nothing is wrong with either of our vehicles. I’m not actually going to get it serviced, I was being politely dishonest to end a conversation I knew wouldn’t go well. It’s easy to offend people about things they own and me saying the low speed tuning sucks implies something on their identical vehicles and that can be upsetting so I must be wrong or my truck must be broken. Again, for roughly $70k the truck impresses. Luckily it’s also easily circumvented doing exactly as you do. Custom set to sport suspension, one touch and solved.
Anyways. If you have any recommendations on muffler or tint shops please share. Nova speed didn’t want to splice in a different can or install a prefabricated kit and they have been the only place I’m familiar with in the area.