Air suspension

[Ksnau]

Yeah I'll show you what's wrong. The problem is that the hole needs to be in the exact certain spot and it's almost impossible to not move the hole some just by dremeling it out. I've tried it on other stuff it doesn't work out.

So for the rear airbags there's a piece of metal that the bottom clamps around to seal it tight and that has a hole carved out to slide over the nipple on the lower control arm. But you also have to bolt that to the control arms. They made another flange that bolts to that metal piece and for some reason the hole on that one doesn't match the hole in the first metal piece. It's half a millimeter small. so when I take off the metal piece that I'm pointing to, that's not painted black. The black one that the air bag clamps around slides over the nipple on the lower control arm as you can see in the second picture. But that aluminum non-black colored piece that I'm pointing to won't. I'm guessing that when they put the bevel on they were using a CNC machine and accidentally made the bevel the size the whole should be instead of making the hole the right size and then the bevel little bigger but I don't know.

I emailed Tom yesterday and he contacted universal Air and I'm waiting to hear back still what we're going to do.

 

[Mark S.]

Yeah I'll show you what's wrong. The problem is that the hole needs to be in the exact certain spot and it's almost impossible to not move the hole some just by dremeling it out. I've tried it on other stuff it doesn't work out.

So for the rear airbags there's a piece of metal that the bottom clamps around to seal it tight and that has a hole carved out to slide over the nipple on the lower control arm. But you also have to bolt that to the control arms. They made another flange that bolts to that metal piece and for some reason the hole on that one doesn't match the hole in the first metal piece. It's half a millimeter small. so when I take off the metal piece that I'm pointing to, that's not painted black. The black one that the air bag clamps around slides over the nipple on the lower control arm as you can see in the second picture. But that aluminum non-black colored piece that I'm pointing to won't. I'm guessing that when they put the bevel on they were using a CNC machine and accidentally made the bevel the size the whole should be instead of making the hole the right size and then the bevel little bigger but I don't know.

I emailed Tom yesterday and he contacted universal Air and I'm waiting to hear back still what we're going to do.

Ah, the trials of an early adopter. Take heart in knowing you are blazing the trail for all to follow!

 

[Ksnau]

Yeah I'm hoping the rest goes well and it'll be easy for anyone else but I do hope that someone can figure out a better spot to mount it besides the spare tire carrier cuz I feel like that's a big loss and a big change having to mount a spare tire on the back with the hitch and to get a good one cost like $1,000 too. I mean the cheap Amazon one I got was still like 125 bucks for all the stuff and I still had to cut and weld it to make it really work and not block the rear camera and it's still does block like the top 2 in of the screen and messes with the inner driver side reverse sensor.

I could fix all that by like mounting it on the roof but that just sounds like such a pain in the butt if I ever have to actually take it off and put it on top. But I guess I shouldn't have to do that very often. So maybe I'll ditch the hitch mounted tire carrier and get a roof mounted one.

Also we are still waiting for the manufacturer to get back to us which is really frustrating me. It shouldn't take more than 24 hours to get back to me on this.

 

[Ksnau]

So I still haven't heard back from the manufacturer but I thought I'd show a picture. I got the front all put together. I just haven't fully tightened down and threadlocked all the bolts cuz I'm wondering if I'm going to have to alter how long I set the springs in the front but this is what it looks like. I really hope that the manufacturer doesn't just ignore me and I'm just going to have to go to machine shop and get it done myself to pay for it myself which would make me not recommend this at all if customer service is going to be like this because this is not a big problem

Oh and if anyone does do this, getting the sway bar bolts off for the ones that actually connect to the sway bar and not the struts. You basically have to pull the strut all the way out and leave it and then you can move it so that the tie rod isn't in the way and you can just barely get your ratchet with your t40 and your 18 mm wrench in there and you're going to have about 5 minutes of just barely being able to turn the screw about a 12th of a turn because you can't get an impact in there at all. But it's definitely doable. You just have to have both sides completely off and then you can move the steering tie rods out of the way just enough. I think I have a picture of how I had it set up. I'll put it in here

 

[Ksnau]

Okay good news. I just heard back from the shop. The manufacturer just shipped out the parts that I need but since it was late in the day I'm not sure when I'll get them. Keep updating y'all as it goes by. I was really hoping to get all this done in one weekend. It sucks that it didn't work out that way.

Also, since I'm wanting this to be at stock height and then just go up and down a couple inches from there. I'm basically setting the front springs and the rear dampers at the length that the stock ones were. If anyone's done air suspension before, do they know if that's a good starting point? It makes sense to me but I've never done air suspension before

 

[Mark S.]

I do hope that someone can figure out a better spot to mount it besides the spare tire carrier...

You could probably mount the compressor and tank under the hood—there's plenty of room—but you'd have to fabricate your own mounts, and you'd likely need a different tank. Something like this.

 

[Ksnau]

Yeah I'd have to run a much smaller tank and I guess if I didn't mess with the air that much it wouldn't matter but even still like. I'm looking at the engine bay right now and I can't see anywhere that a tank would fit of any real size.

I did get lazy once I realized I was missing a part but I connected an airline to the front driver side bag to make sure everything worked and it did and it inflated. I didn't realize I was holding the controller upside down at first though. I was worried for a second cuz no air was going to it but I was hearing air from the back and then I realized I had it upside down

I just kept putting off drilling holes into the spare tire wheel. Well I hate doing anything cutting on the body of a car but I realize that my part should be here any day now and I got to get the other stuff done and ready.

 

[Ksnau]

I appreciate the suggestion but I just don't see the room under the hood.

 

[Ksnau]

So the manufacturer did actually get back to me in 2 days. I wish he was a little faster responding but still not that bad and I got the parts two days after that so they did mail them right away and everything fit. I've got everything put together and now I'm just trying to get the levels right to where it's going to sit for most of my driving.

I started with making the front struts as long as the old ones and then dialed it back an inch and that seems pretty close to what I want stock height while being right about the middle of the air suspension so I can go up or down a few inches.

The rears I kind of did the same thing started at the stock length and brought them down an inch on the dampers. The tricky part though is because the control arm is swinging in an arc when I first put the air springs on. You have to air them all the way down and kind of tuck it in while you air it up so that the spacer cup on top of the airbag slides over where the coil spring used to mount to. But it was all done really well. It's even got this little divot or indexing point that matches up with the rubber isolator or coil cup

The only part I didn't like was on these brackets versus the other companies. You have to drill your own holes for the lower bracket for the rear lower control arms. He didn't extend them so they line up with the stock holes. It's really not hard to do but even still I ended up messing them up and had to kind of dremel them a little bigger in a certain direction so they would line up right. That's about the only suggestion I can think of so far to make the kit better though, but that's just for the airbags. Remember I piece together my own stuff for the air tank and the compressor and all the electrical. And I haven't driven it around yet cuz I'm trying to get the height exactly where I want it first. But when I do I'll let you all know. I should have taken pictures but I've just been really tired.

 

[Ksnau]

So awesome

 

[Ksnau]

Can someone with a badlands first edition or heritage limited measure the distance from the center of their hubs to the center of the fender for the front and rear? I feel like my measurements are off.

 

[Mark S.]

Can someone with a badlands first edition or heritage limited measure the distance from the center of their hubs to the center of the fender for the front and rear? I feel like my measurements are off.

Front: 18"
Rear: 19"

I have the Bushwacker flares installed on mine.

 

[Ksnau]

Thank you so much!.

I also made another video explaining the air suspension a little more. It doesn't actually show me using it much but when I have someone else to hold the camera ill make a better video showing it going up and down.

Also, you might hear a air leak in the video right after I made it. I realized that the driver rear tire airbag was leaking. It turned out it was actually the valve solenoid body but luckily the solenoid was still working and because it was passed the return date I decided to just take it apart and see what was going on and there's basically some black nasty gunk stuck in there keeping the valve open so I was able to scrape that out, clean it out, put it back on and now it seems to be working again.

 

[Ksnau]

So I drove it to work today and so far driving has been fine. But when I first went to leave my house the rear solenoids would not inflate like I couldn't hear them clicking. I took the top off and I think a wire was pinched or being pulled out of its connection or something because when I took the top off it started working and I have enough room under the floor piece that I can just leave it loose for now until I can push the wires back in correctly. But other than that and still trying to get it dialed into the exact height that I want. It seems to be going good. Knock on wood

 

[Ksnau]

So unless something happens I plan to go to the car show in Scottsdale this Saturday if anyone wants to see it. It's also a good car show to check out anyways it's been going for decades . except when I guess it shut down for a year or two for COVID, I think the longest running car show in the country and definitely in the state and it's free. It's been going since the 60s I read. It's on talking stick road just west of the 101 at the McDonald's and there's always hundreds of cars. It goes from 3 to 8:00. Probably show up around like 4:00 pm

I added a pic of it aired up and down. I just emailed the manufacturer for a 1 inch spacer cuz I want the rear a little higher. They might not be at their extreme I read it's bad to fully unload them and I need to check the max psi rating but this was at like 10 and 90 psi iirc.