Air Ride Suspension on Skoolie

[wmah]

My opinion is this,

I prefer the standard leaf spring on a bus while making plenty of turns doing a bus route. They just seem to feel more stable. And I would say the more weight the nicer the ride is going down the highway.

Air ride feels good going down the highway but making turns while doing a bus route, it seems to lean into the turns.

The mor ryde set up seems to get s ride in between the standard leafs and air ride. All it really is is leaf springs with a big rubber block on the back end.

I havn't seen a air bag blow up yet, but I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to replace compared to a all leaf set up. I have had my fair share of leafs break and replaced them.

[davido]

I just ran across this thread today while doing a little digging online. Check out this setup: http://www.keldermanairride.com/product ... id=F53REAR

It's an air ride system that uses leafs. It's not just a helper system. It uses the leafs for locating, instead of something like a 4 link or radius arm setup. Then it uses a air bag supported platform instead of the shackle. Pretty cool setup.

TRX, how much pressure do you have to run in your bags? Have you ever used JUST the bags to support it, without the leafs?

[trx]

The new lighter springs w/air bags seems to have helped. Of course I've always been in the drivers seat so I feel mostly the front suspension. Overall it seems to ride about the same as my dad's truck ('83 3/4 ton Chevy). I didn't get bags large enough to hold all the weight. These are only helper bags which can hold only 5200 lbs. combined. I could have went with big-rig bags and no springs but I worried about being able to fabricate all new suspension components and have it work properly. I was also using my friends auto-repair shop so the work had to be done in the evening and the bus had to be out of the way by morning. Raising the bus with bottle jacks would have been real fun because of how high it had to be lifted before the springs were unloaded. For how much work it was just changing the springs and how much the new springs cost, maybe I should have tried anyway. $700 in springs could have gone to bigger bags, control arm fabrication and heavy duty shocks. I'm not sure if I would have had a sway problem with my heavy Scout in the back...another unknown.

BTW, my bags were about $130 shipped off eBay. They retail for around $100 each. They are Air Lift 2b-7's.

Chad

[paul iossi]

check out the ridewell corp site, featherride manual specifically shows the installation proceedure for their trailer axle kit that uses a common (inexpensive bag, used on bigrig tag/lift axles), also look at the other big rig suspension suppliers for ideas on how they set up airride systems and reverse engineer your own system. I used a 4 link system on the rear and radius rods&panhard bar front on my 4 wheeler, 14" adjustable travel @ each corner.
Firestone industrial and Goodyear list the engineering and application specs for their bags on the websites, rolling sleeve type bags (more expensive)have more travel length than the bellows type bags.
Check with your independant truck parts dealer, they can tell you what parts are (AA) popular/available.
The other option would be to swap in a system from the truck salvage yard, try to buy a"rear frame section" with all the hangers, links,ride height valve,etc attached and then transfer it to your frame.