Air Spring kit Major Fabrication Required

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BigDaddy72

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Well once again I have a hurdle to jump.

I bought airsprings/air bag kit.

Buuuttt since my sons truck is a cab and chassis the bag kit doesn’t fit this application.

The tires will rub/touch the brackets.

Any ideas on how to move bags to the inside of the frame rail?
Anyone else run across this issue or am I the first.

Returning the kit or buying something different isn’t an option. I have to make what we have work.

To make it even harder I don’t want to weld on the diff or frame.
 
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75Monza

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Think you are sort of screwed with that set up. Maybe someone else will chime in on this, but pretty sure you need the air bag over the spring. If you make some bracket inboard over to the spring, most likely will have side twisting of the leaf which could cause a few issues, too much side pressure mounted that way for the bag to be effective I think. Mounting inboard and going down to axle tube also seems like a really bad idea, not sure how the axle would pivot with 4 total mounts across the axle. Just curious, are you running duals on this since cab and chassis and will it have a standard bed or a flat bed?
 
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Ricko1966

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How bad do they rub? As in can wheel spacers or different backspace wheels fix it? I put 1.5 inch spacers on my trailer axle meant for a toyota 4x4. Used cost me 25.00 bucks for the pair shipped on EBay.
 
eskimomann209

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No welding doesn’t make it hard LOL. It makes it impossible if the wheel spacer idea doesn’t work. but seeing as how you put air springs on it for load assist I think spacers are probably not a good idea.
 
BigDaddy72

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Ya wheel spacers are out. We want to keep the wheels flush with the side of the bed.

Yes we are running duals.

I’m probably going to have to add a axel tube air bag mount. That will require welding and repainting.

Or sandwich a plate where the spacer is off the spring and gusset it.

Not quite sure yet how I’m going to fab the mounts up but I will figure it out.

I’m not worried about the bags over the axel tube. They are ment to be a helper under heavy load not a suspension replacement.

In effect like an axel tube that is constantly on a metered bump stop.

I just need to figure out how I’m going to mount the top of the bag. I may end up fabbing a crossmember and mounting them that way.

Something like this.

Thanks for the input I appreciate it!
 
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bucket

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There are inboard style kits too. My recently acquired Suburban has them on the rear, unfortunately I don't know who made the kit. I can probably ask the PO though.

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That's with no air in the bags.
 
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nyceguy01

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Timbren SES will fit and you wont need to deal with air...
Ill never do airbags again..
 
BigDaddy72

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bucket said:
There are inboard style kits too. My recently acquired Suburban has them on the rear, unfortunately I don't know who made the kit. I can probably ask the PO though.

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That's with no air in the bags.
Click to expand...

Super excellent!! I was hoping someone had been down this road before.

I don’t mean to inconvenience you too terribly much, but would you mind taking a couple of pics from different angles (when you have time and daylight of course)

Thank you everyone for your suggestions! I really appreciate the helpful spirit here on this forum. Your ideas will help me avoid reinventing the wheel!
 
bucket

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BigDaddy72 said:
Super excellent!! I was hoping someone had been down this road before.

I don’t mean to inconvenience you too terribly much, but would you mind taking a couple of pics from different angles (when you have time and daylight of course)

Thank you everyone for your suggestions! I really appreciate the helpful spirit here on this forum. Your ideas will help me avoid reinventing the wheel!
Click to expand...

Unfortunately I'm away for work again. That picture I posted is just one that the PO had sent me before I got the truck. It may be a couple weeks before I'm home again.
 
Frankenchevy

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As @bucket mentioned, an axle tube mount is pretty normal. If that’s the Air Lift 57237, they state they require 8” of clearance from frame rail to tire. That’s the one I’m putting on my K30 coming up here pretty soon to aid the new springs I got which are softer than a half ton.

I have the axle tube style on a couple trucks. The most simple one I have is a Firestone kit on my 2019 z71. The upper plate just replaces the jounce bumper and the lower plate has two u-bolts. One goes around the axle tube and one goes around the base of the spring pack/leaf perch. It’s plenty stout. I just had 2200lbs in the bed of that truck and with 80psi in the bags, it didn’t squat one bit and pretty much rode normally.
 
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eskimomann209 said:
No welding doesn’t make it hard LOL. It makes it impossible if the wheel spacer idea doesn’t work. but seeing as how you put air springs on it for load assist I think spacers are probably not a good idea.
Click to expand...


Effing around one day in the rain as a teen,got the car totally sideways a few times, on purpose, because that's what I was doing , lost control, spun it hit a curb sideways bent a wheel tucked the wheel and control arm under the car the wheel adapter was the only thing that survived.
 
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