The quest for the smoothest ride is likened to King Arthur's quest for the Holy Grail: endlessly pursued yet somehow elusive. But, by upgrading your...
The quest for the smoothest ride is likened to King Arthur’s quest for the Holy Grail: endlessly pursued yet somehow elusive. But, by upgrading your vehicle with an air suspension system, you can quickly realize nirvana through driving bliss.
A car’s suspension system is like a public school teacher: overworked and under-appreciated systems. It has to support the weight of the car, including passengers and cargo, while allowing the tires and wheels to move up and down to minimize impacts from cracks, bumps and the other numerous imperfections in the road. Your suspension also prevents excessive body squat and dive during acceleration and braking. There are a number of suspension systems on the market, but without question, air suspension remains the most popular.
Air shocks are powered by an engine-driven or electric air compressor and continue to be wildly popular among those in the know. The compressor pressurizes air and uses it to replace conventional steel springs. An air bag suspension provides a smoother ride and is fully adjustable, allowing drivers to tweak each wheel’s air pressure individually and even tilt the vehicle side to side or front to back to level it out. The air cushion softens the contact between the axle and the frame to reduce bottoming out, and they provide between 500 – 5,000 lbs of load-leveling capacity depending on your vehicle and the type of air suspension you get.
Most air compressor kits are a complete solution for upgrading your suspension, including the air compressor, manifold, wiring harness, control box and some that even feature a 5-gallon air tank that fills with 200psi in less than 40 seconds.
A performance grade air suspension kit is the Road Runner of the auto world: pretty much unbeatable. And since we live in the time of tech, many air compressors can be controlled by a wireless remote from inside the cab of your vehicle. This innovative system makes adjusting your air springs from inside (or outside) your cab simple-just push a button, and you’re off. Plus, the wireless design means you won’t have a nest of wires running through your cab.
Many air suspension systems feature advanced diagnostics to provide complete control of your air shocks. In addition, many systems provide a setting for user-defined memory, allowing you to quickly switch between your most frequently used settings.
One word of advice: don’t be tempted by generic parts. When it comes to your suspension system, the best kits are those that have been personally-tailored to your unique make, model and year, providing all the components required for a quick and easy do-it-yourself installation. Nothing’s worse than getting half-way through a suspension upgrade only to find out the kit you ordered is missing some key component, like the air compressor or the air lines.
Learn more about . Stop by Justin Lofton’s site where you can find out all about and what it can do for you.
Shock absorbers don’t really absorb shock, they dampen it. Why is this important for you to know? To improve ride quality, or in the case of a tow-able RV, the “white knuckle” factor induced by trailer bounce and sway, it is necessary to understand a little regarding the dynamics a shock absorber attempts to manage. This mod discusses both ride dynamics and issues related with the item, in addition to to know how to mod your RV to drastically develop your driving and/or towing understanding.
Basically put, a shock absorbers sole purpose is to dampen the compression and rebound of any suspension system by controlling the speed at which a suspension cycles. Without them, your RV would continue to bounce up and down until the kinetic energy is finally dissipated from the suspension’s springs (e.g. leaf springs, coil springs, torsion bar, etc.). Now let’s think about the law of conservation of energy. With this law in mind, shocks will perform two functions. The first function is to slow the suspension’s cycling of compressing or rebounding. Secondly, since energy can’t be destroyed, the shock transforms the kinetic energy into heat as it dampens the “bouncing” of the springs. That’s it. That’s what a shock does.
So why is this important? The the greater part of tow-able RVs don’t are available from the factory with shock absorbers! And while class A, B, and C motor homes do have shocks, they are often times barely adequate to control the suspension, causing wandering and excessive side-to-side motion on uneven surfaces.
To install shock absorbers on a tow-able RV, a retrofit kit is generally needed, although some tow-able currently have the state of mind and shackle tabs necessary. A retrofit kit contains bracketry and hardware necessary to easily install the shocks. These kits use a plate that mounts to the bottom of the leaf spring shackles and has a tab for the bottom of the shock to mount to. The top mount for the shock attaches to the frame. It is often essential to drill a hole in the frame in order to bolt the top shock mount to. This sounds scary to do but there is generally enough frame material that the hole drilled won’t weaken the frame any significant amount.
For torsion type axles, like the Dexter brand, the retrofit kits are a little different. Since there are no shackles, you must either replace the torsion arm link (from the axle housing to the spindle) with one that has a lower shock mount, or have a tab welded to the torsion arm link. The upper mount can either be drilled through the frame or an additional mounting tab will need to be welded to the frame. Much depends on your particular axle arrangement, though most torsion axle setups are generally the same.
Motor homes are a little different. Since they already come equipped with shock absorbers, replacing them is all that is important. It’s much mod you possibly can commonly fix by yourself as all that is generally involved is, using basic hand tools, to unbolt the shocks from their mounts and replace them using the reverse order used during removal. There may be some bolt corrosion to deal with but a little penetrating fluid sprayed on a half hour or so before bolt removal will make things much easier. If you have a motor home that has struts (like a Sprinter) instead of independent springs and shocks, you should have a qualified suspension professional do the job. Special tools are needed to compress the strut assembly if you want to remove and replace the shock cartridge.
Tip: When fitting a tow-able RV with shocks using a retrofit kit, you will have to ensure you know how long of a shock you need beforehand as the upper mount point can vary from trailer to trailer. A close guesstimate is to measure from the lower shackle plate to the middle of the frame rail. If you opt for the kit which includes shocks, make certain this measurement is within the working range of the shocks supplied with the kit.
Want to find out more about , then visit Justin Lofton’s site on how to choose the best for your needs.
