Jumping off the Diesel Bandwagon - UPDATED

transamz9 wrote:
BenK,
I agree with most of what you say except for some of the air bag comments. I have 8 inches of travel in the air bags I have on my truck. The size of the air bag will determine the spring rate. Accumulators can also be added to slow the spring rate down. There is so many variations in the way an air system can be set up also. To give you an idea to this I will explain how I have mine set up.

snip....

Another plus is that I have on board air to run tools, air up tires and I don't have to use the slow landing gear on my 5er to level at the camp site. I just use the truck's suspension.

Think we still agree in principle

Air bages comes in varying forms and how they work

I was talking about bellows type and they do have longer stroke when married together
with an interface between two bellows. Going to three or more has issues with the
arc of the axle travel...they moosh off line towards the outer radius

Also agree with what you re-engineered the leaf spring system with the addition
of air bags.

The links system tightens up the normal loosey goosey leaf spring setup. Did you
account for the solid radius of the links vs the leaf spring arc?

What you have done is exactly what I want to do with my GMT400 Suburban's live
axle assembly...EXACTLY

Then the non-bellows air bags..they do NOT use the 'flap' lever, but mainly PSI against
the saddle (bottom) and top bracket. Others use the contained system (coils and/or
tube) much like a hydraulic piston in tube system