US $2,149.95
After hooking up my new trailer I found that it made my truck squat more then I liked. The rear dropped a 3 1/2" when hooked up and that was with an empty trailer. There are a number of suspension upgrades that can be done but one of the tried and true, least expensive and easiest upgrades is installing air bags. In simple terms air bags are nothing more then heavy duty balloons that fit between your springs and frame that lifts the truck frame to level it. Having the truck sag in the rear not only aims your headlights high into the eyes of incoming traffic, it can also cause handling problems.
There are a number of different brands available and after looking at them they are all pretty much the same. I chose Air Lift brand mainly because I can remember them from my teenage days. I figure if they have been around that long they must be doing something right. I plunked down my $200 and waited for them to arrive. Got them 3 days later but the weather wasn't cooperating so I had to wait until this past weekend to install them. I also purchased an air compressor but I will cover that in a later post.
The first thing That needed to be done was to jack up the truck and remove the wheels. Once that was done I removed the rubber bump stops from the frame. I sure am glad I had an electric impact wrench. Not only did it make easy work of the wheel lug nuts, I'm not sure I would have been able to remove the bump stop bolts without it..... or a long breaker bar at the very least.
Once that was done I assembled the air bag mounts and then attached the mounting pads to the frame in place of the bump stops. To fit the bags between the axle and frame I had to raise the frame to get clearance. It wasn't hard to get them in, just took a bit of trial and error to figure out the best way to get around the shocks, brake lines and emergency brake cables. Once in place 6 bolts needed to be tighten and mounting them were done. The one extra piece was to attach a heat shield to the exhaust pipe near the right hand bag to keep it cool.
Running the air lines is the creative part. There are no instructions on where to route them as each install will be different. While laying on your back you just have to look at how everything is laid out under the truck to find the best way to run them while avoiding any edges that could damage the air lines. I chose to run the air lines along the emergency brake cables as they are really stiff and it avoided any areas that could cause damage.
That's it for now. You can see the two bags installed in the above pictures. I'll get into the rest of the air line install when I cover installation of the compressor and associated electrical wiring in my next installation. I can't wait to try them out.
 |