rear airbag ride quality

Lynnmor wrote:

Groover wrote:


I had those on my F150 and they made the empty ride brutal to the point that my wife refused to ride in the truck until I took them off. I replaced them with 2000lb bags and the empty ride is much better. I would think that even on a 3/4 ton truck an extra 2000lbs of support would be adequate. The other thing that may have contributed to a rough ride was the dual channel pressure control. Not letting the air flow from side to side really made the truck roll more when when hitting a bump with one tire. When I put on the lighter bags I put them both on the same hose. I hope that you don't have an issue but just in case you have some ideas.

You do know that when not needed the air pressure can be reduced to 5 psi giving very little effect to the ride?

In desperation to save the trip took the fuse out of the circuit, unplugged the hoses to let all of the air out then put the hoses back in to keep dirt out. It was still barely tolerable. I also have another F150 with 5000lb bags and internal jounce bumpers still mounted and the back seat is almost unusable for people. Fortunately, it doesn't get used much for that. I am thinking that the internal jounce bumpers reduce the space available for air to compress into and make the ride rougher. Whatever, my experience is that the 2000lb bags give a much better ride and have enough capacity for most pickups. The only problem with them is that they are not compatible with a gooseneck hitch whereas the 5000lb bags with jounce bumpers are. We use the truck with them to pull a gooseneck horse trailer. I keep thinking about putting a ping tank on the airbags to soften the ride but just haven't found the time to do it. Freightliner thinks enough of that idea that ping tanks are standard on their motorhomes with air suspension.