Update (research/initial experimentation):
Ram has this listed as a “Rail Section Damper” in their chassis parts listing, but there are similar devices throughout all vehicles. For this post I’ll refer to them as ‘dampers.’ I’m an aerospace mechanical engineer so please let me know if I get too into the language.
Dampers are designed to cancel out vibrations (both mechanical (conductive) and auditory (convective)). I’m discussing the chassis damper here but there are others made for the exhaust, transmission, engine, etc. From my google research on forums, the collective majority recommend not to remove them because they are there for a purpose. A small percentage removed them, and half of that small percentage said there was no noticeable difference. The other half did notice a difference and decided to put the dampers back on.
So I took mine off this morning:
Four 16mm nuts came off very easily. Each side weighs about 8 lbs, and is attached to the bracket by rubber so it shakes. I then drove 60 miles on city, highway, back roads with zero noticeable difference. No increase of regular road vibrations (idle, stabilized speed, and acceleration), and no difference in the normal auditory spectrum. What I can’t see or determine by removing these dampers are structural cracks/failures starting to form if in theory the vibrations are now “not dampened,” which would take a while to even show up.
In conclusion, I feel that removing these dampers to make room for the air tank are my only solution with accepting a risk of something going wrong structurally down the road, however, there is zero noticeable difference with them being removed. IMHO, since not all vehicles have them even in the same year/chassis, I would imagine that during the manufacturing process it met the criteria to have the dampers installed. It could also be that I have added weight of my block and tackle, pioneer kit, Etc that may somehow aid in dampening the vibrations. Since I can reattach the dampers, I can remove the air tank if any problems arise.
If anyone has access to an autocad or solidworks file of the Ram chassis, I can run it through a dynamic vibrations test to get a definitive answer.
My recommendation is if you have the same problem I do with limited space, I would remove the dampers to see if there is a noticeable difference before making any modifications. If you decide to permanently remove them, you’ll have to accept that it may or may not cause problems after some time. Hope this helps