14 replies to this topic

[Tomas Tierra]

In other words, will the expense of airbags provide a little more safety zone for my rear end?

Thanks..

It depends on what kind of boots your wife is wearing:D

[Pete D]

my air valves are located in the fender wells near the top. Most installs I see are on the back bumper by the license plate step. I thought I would be kicking them there getting in and out of the camper. Since I rarely put chains on I didnt think I would have much of a problem with them in the well. So far, so good.

I saw a clever installation where the owner had put the two air valves in as the two lower bolts holding on his rear license plate!

[DLN]

I finally got around to installing my air bags on September 14 and what a difference in the ride and lift on the truck. I test drove it the next day with 45 pounds in the drivers side and 40 in the other and the ride is now tight.
For everyday use those pressures do provide too much lift so I've aired down about 20 pounds each and that looks like the way to go.

I had called a couple of shops in Reno to price the installation and they wanted about $500 for parts and labor. I ended up buying the kit on line for $260 with free delivery and doing the work myself. It only took about 3 hours to install bags and valve stems and another hour to get the air lines routed, tied in, and protected from the exhaust pipe. The heat shield Firestone provides for the passenger side is very cheesy and takes some remodeling to get in the proper position.

Now for true luxury Firestone makes a couple of dual controllers with on board compressors that look very nice. I may add one next year if I can figure out an easy location to mount it. Does anyone have one of these or something similar and if so were is the compressor mounted?

Here are a couple in pictures. The air bag shot was taken with 70 pounds of pressure during the air leak test. I liked the idea of the value stems through the license plate bolt holes but couldn't use it as I have to move the plate around depending on the position of the tail gate.

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[erod]

DLN, nice work, i have the same bags and love them! i had mine installed here and i think it was under $335 for the whole package...i thought it was a good deal. i haven't had any issues and after add a leafs and new leaf packs not getting me where i wanted to be with lift the ride rites did the trick! my only complaint is the don't sit center on the axle as your picture shows. apparently not an issue however and i have yet to have any problems. there is a cool thread on the ExPo that a member here (Oly) did on a nice little unit that keeps both bags open with a connector tube allowing for air to travel back and forth and thus allowing for greater articulation. pretty cool...maybe he'll chime in. anyway, great work, looking forward to your report!

[DLN]

erod,

Sounds like you got a great deal on your air bags. I might have jumped at that price.

The interconnecting tube sounds like a good idea. For our needs I want to maintain separate control of each bag to level the rear side to side. We do some 4 wheel roads but likely not as much as a lot of the members so the need for articulation isn't that great.

We did discover that we could do some leveling with the air bags for camp set up. Nice added bonus. We have a cheap (and I stress cheap) little 12V compressor we bought many years ago to air the bike tires that plugs into the 12V outlet and pumped the bags up fairly fast. I set the level on the floor and pumped the low side up to fine tune the leveling. Wouldn't work for more than an 1" I wouldn't think but was pretty handy.