AH64ID wrote:
Do you really think the airbags limit travel on a HD pickup?
Absolutely.
I measured the travel on my stock F350 at 11" if I remember right from bump stop to full droop. The Firestone airbags are about 5" from fully extended to bottomed. To make matters worse, from empty to camper loaded uses about 2 - 3" of travel. You can attempt to recover this by pumping the bags to 100 psi, or live with less jounce travel (or no rebound empty). When I put the Firestone under-the-frame kit on, empty jounce travel was reduced from about 5 inches to less than 2 (the bag replaced the bump stop).
In practice on the highway you don't often use more than 5" travel centered around the nominal height. But you will with a little off road work, and the nominal height changes with load if you are going to take advantage of the steel springs. There is no easy way to reset the bag height in any setup I have seen. On full droop the axle hangs from the bags (despite their warning not to do this), the shocks will not limit it for another 4" or more.
Those are the reasons the Daystar product looked attractive to me. You can set the height to work well for loaded, when unloaded they will lift off the perch and effectively remove themselves from operation without damage from overextension. I had devised such a setup when I installed my over-the-spring set (using a long bolt on the bag mount to allow it to lift off) but there isn't enough room under the perch to give much motion.
The Carli bags will not work on a stock ride height 2wd truck. I wish Firestone (or someone) would make the cone stye bags for light pickups. These can have a lot more travel than the convoluted bag typically used. The Firestone set I put on my Class A had 8" or more of useable travel, and that is wasted on a Class A.
