Hey all.

Any and all help would be great. Thanks in advance.

I'm about to do a axle swap and was wondering if anyone has any experience with air suspension. I've been looking into it for the last week or so and it seems fairly simple to put together. Even if you don't have any experience with it and can see a pitfall, please feel free to chime in.

What I'm thinking:

Picked out a 4.5" deflated and 14" inflated airbag with mounting hardware. I have a dual 480c viair 200 psi system and understand that I would be riding at 7-8" or about 60psi for street ( approximately 2-3" lift) and then higher off road(100psi-3500lb bags). I will be using seat adjust valves from tractor trailers to adjust the bags independently with a return to air tank dumps. The air tanks will have a 150psi safety release. The rears will go to one tank and the fronts to another. Which should result in minimal fill time as they will be 2.5 gallon and the bags take pretty much nothing to operate. The compressors will be set too, with a pressure switch of 90 psi on and 130 off or so.

Rough written diagram?? Lol


Thanks, Lance.

 

Bump hoping someone will chime in

 

Nothing to add. Sounds like an interesting project. Will you still have coils on your Jeep with the set up your describing? I have seen some air bag suspensions for a JK with the airbags inside the coils.

Subscribed to this thread, and please document this as best you can with lots of pictures.

 

I will definitely continue updating this thread when I get started( in a month or so). I still need quite a few things. Thanks for your interest.

Also there will be no coils, all air bag. I'm now thinking that I will do a leveling line between the driver and passenger side, for off-road only. So that when one tire goes up it pushes air to the the other bag for more down pressure. Keep the tires on the ground essentially, forced articulation is the key, I think.

 

i am interested to see how this works out..i have built a lot of cars with both hydro and air ride suspension...i believe the biggest problem you may encounter will be system redundancy,that being said air ride suspension is pretty tough in general and set up correctly with 1/2 air line i have even seen them used to hop lowrider cars.my concern would not be with linear travel but with horizontal loads imposed by axle shift due to large amounts of suspension travel and flex.air bags also need to be mounted free of any contact with suspension components.i have blown out firestone bags from minimal rub against control arms.

 

That's my concern as well. I'm looking into a 4 link set up with a disco to make it's 3 link. Or possibly running a watts system.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gj_A...e_gdata_player

Video of watts system.

 

Had air suspension on my LR3. It sucked. I doubt that's an apples to apples comparison with what you're looking at but just seems to introduce several other failure modes with questionable benefit. If air was the way to go, I would expect to see it implemented all over the place but that's just not the case. Very interesting project though. If you can make it work better than some of the traditional suspension kits out there then you're the man!

 

Had a few conversations with some of the local shops and have located some bead locked 3 stage bags. With witnessing the capabilities of one of the shops golf carts, I commenced my build.

First stage air.

For the air system I chose to go with the dual 480c viair with a 5 gallon tank. 3.53 cfm and a 50% duty cycle at 200psi. Which should allow me enough air that I won't have to have it running all the time. (as these will be mounted in the back of the jeep.)


I'll have to do a little more research as I'm not sure how large my perches will have to be to sit at a good ride height. Also to triangulate I may need to remove my gas tank and do a fuel cell. Should be fun, I've see plenty of offroad vehicles running airbags now. I am really liking the forced articulation, the ride height adjustment on the fly with multiple angle adjustment. Think of the possibilities.

To be continued.

 

Can't wait to see what you come up with!!

 

Saw a TJ on full air suspension -- The articulation was nice, but it seemed like twice the work to clear an obstacle. Normal operating procedures + operating the air controls. I'm not sure if I'm missing the benefits, or if it's more of a niche/novelty thing?