Warranty Shocks?

[VX4EJR]

Ok, here is a picture of my front left shock. There is some kind of stain or fluid at the top where I circled. It doesn't seem like water and it hasn't rained here, it's just at the top too...doesn't go below that and there is no drips down further or puddling to the ground.

Would this be a leak??

[mbeach]

That sir, is a leak.
Not in a typical location either. Most (I assume) of our leaks have been from the bottom of the shock (inside the boot, where the shaft enters the shock body).

[Heraclid]

Well, I took the plunge and have the Rancho RS9000X shocks on the way, finally. I'm somewhat depressed today because there's a rallycross going on at Joe's and I'm not there. But I said I wouldn't run rallycross at Ft. Meade again until I had new shocks and I'm sticking to it. It's killing me though!!! Thought I would have them on by now but things just didn't work out that way. Lately, there are some places I go through several times a day where my VX is taking the bumps pretty hard and never used to. Do not want to bang the truck apart, and I think the rears are hurtin' pretty bad at this point so definitely not too soon for the change.

[mbeach]

I have the RS9000Xs on the Ironman and I have been pretty happy with them. For the money, they work exceptionally well. My next set might be the Bilsteins, only to say that I've tried them.
I've also been looking hard at the Fox 2.0 shocks.

Whetever I choose for the I-man, I'd still like to have the stock units on the wifes VX.
Now I'm dealing with another shirt at Isuzu -someone named "Marie"

Here's the rundown/runaround as of today,
Isuzu: We'll cover the shocks if the dealer says that they need replaced.
Dealer: We'll replace the shocks, if Isuzu says they'll pay for them.

..and now we've come full circle...

[mbeach]

Red Tape, Fear, and Incompetance

Since Isuzu is on the way out of the market, I no longer have a regional service rep. I have some tool named "Clode" and a local service manager who's scared of getting stuck with a bill for 4 new shocks.

The dealership's ONLY way of testing the shocks is the manual bumper bounce test -which I pointed out is neither quantifiable nor repeatable to any degree of precision. The shocks pass this 'test', and I'm stuck with them. He mentions a fear that he will replace the shocks, then Isuzu's engineers will deem them alright after conducting some mystery 'test' on them. This same person had also never heard of a shock dyno. Unacceptable.

Regional Warranty Guy, Clode, claims that the engineers who will actually do the testing to verify whether or not the shocks can be replaced under warranty are "unreachable by telephone" -WTH?
I just want to know what test they are going to perform, I'm sure that they are not going to bolt them up to a 01 VehiCross and jump up and down on the bumper.

This is just one more reason to debadge. I'm even wetsanding the 'Isuzu' off of the mirrors now.