weasel..... wow man, i understand the safety side of it, but what your saying is cars, trucks, bikes, whatever shouldnt be changed at all from a factory configuration.... are you an advocate of lowered vehicles at all? lifted? any suspension change at all? What would be the correct way for him to solve his suspension problems if airbags are the problems, drop springs? lowering spindles? convert the suspension back to stock? You never pointed out a fix for the problem if he just followed the advice you have given so far he wouldnt be able to move it at all cause it would be sitting on the ground with no airbags in it and nothing having replaced them. Help the guy out, instead of just saying the airbag is the problem tell him what to do to be able to fix it. Airshocks can be bad too cant they? I've seen rocks get in the tube where the air "bag" is and casue them to pop. The front of your 1958 Chrysler is lowered 3 inches, which wouldnt that make it illegal in california being that the ride height has been modified? What about the engineering that went into the factory tailights in the same car, is the car less safe because you replaced them with something else? Maybe if he used a 7 dollar portable compressor and used it to air up his airshocks it would be ok to alter the "sweet spot" the way you did it on your vehicle.
Number one no one is advocating using them in race cars. There are lots of things in race cars that you will not find in street cars and vice versa. You are talking apples and oranges. Second your latest argument against the bags because they are unsafe is based on the ***umption, once again, that they are improperly installed. If the installer does them right there are bump stops and the car does not bottom out if a bag fails. It's called a scrub line and if a builder doesn't know how to incorporate that into his build be it with bags or without he shouldn't be building cars. Any modification is dangerous if it is improperly done. Finally as for your ***umption that no manufactuers use airbags there are a number of transit buses that use air suspensions to raise and lower the height of the buses to make them more accessable to wheel chairs. If they survive in that environment I'm pretty sure they will last in a street driven car.
Yea, all you 'experts' that have been driving/setting up bagged cars for years without problems should listen to weasel(who doesn't owned a bagged car from what i can gather) and throw away your bags. Man i get sick of the ******** on this site. Hey bboppkat, i'm no expert but i've set up my fair share of bags and if your car can make it to northern orange county i'd be glad to take a look at it. I even have a few spare fittings an junk laying around in the garage. I'd offer to come up to LA and scope it out but my daily is down and my Buick needs an alternator so i'm stuck local till pay day next week.
I think it's pretty cool that some random guy puts up a post needing help with a problem and within a couple hours... shazam, a whole list of helpful tips and possible fixes comes up. Then, someone has to critisize the whole situation and start a bunch of $hit. If you don't like air, don't put it on your car. And if you don't like air, don't reply to a thread ***led 'I have an airbag problem'.
Theres only one way to layframe! bagging it! I have a 50 buick special ok im going to check for bends and kinks in the line! or just hook up my works compressor to the bags to see if they go up like that! theres nothing holding the A arms back, theres full movement in them, when i lift my car with my jack it fully extends! i tried a different valve and the same result, and yes the valves are pointing in the right direction! after work today ill report my findings!
Just going off the pics... what is the rating on those front bags? You should not have a supply problem with that tank and valve set up... It has to be a pinch or?? downstream.. Have you tried taking the line off the front bags and hitting the switches? See what kind of air flow you have at the front bags.. Jason.
if your valves where wired wrong or plumbed wrong you would be able to hear the reverse air as stated earlier. try to delete all that mess for how to see if you bags/ cups are to short. take your front 2 bags and t them together which you probly already did and run a shrader valve in your engine compartment. use your home compressor to supply the air and see if it will lift the car off the ground.make sure to have the weight of the car on the ground not on the jack because the bags are not supporting the weight. if that lifts you now know that its in the line somewhere/ kinked or pinched.most gm a-arm cars that i've bagged i'ved used a 3" cup on top with a 2" cup on the bottom with a #2600 pound bag.you also may want to check out the clearence in the spring pocket, you usually need to remove some of the frame in the inside pinch weld and also the out side . be sure if you do this to reweld and gtind smooth the inside pocket. I wouldn't say I'm as much of an expert on the situation as weasel but I have done about 100 bag setups in my days.
For everyone not condoning airbags on cars, go piss up a rope and start your own thread. This guy is looking for help/advise on "his" car, not yours. Now to get this thread back on track, are you running your lines in the frame rails? I would check the first 2 feet of the lines exiting the bags. If they are making the radius to keep the line in the frame, sometimes they can bend/pinch the line. Another way to isolate the problem is to supply the front bags with an alternate source of air (shop compressor). Take some of your left over line and plumb both bags to a T and fill them that way. Keep us updated. Nice looking car by the way.
not to jump on the weasel bash, BUT if you read his profile it states that " there is no set formula for hot rodding" alittle contradicting if you ask me.
for troubleshooting you can try installing a schrader valve right on the bag, or on a short peice of line to the bag. i can't see much that would be wrong with the setup you have as far as the bag mounts go, looks like a kit for that subframe? personally i don't give a damn about california's state law. and yes, this board is FULL of experts. you opened up the conversation with your erroneous opinions on airbags, so how about actually refuting the arguments i and others gave you?
hahaha this is great, people get so defensive. lol "lay frame".. thats the gayest term ive ever heard! why would you ever need a car that low?? its not aesthetically pleasing at all! the only time a car should be that low is when i slash all 4 tires. pussies cant drive an actual lowered car?? i drove my buddies 60 t-bird to paso last year it was kinda a ***** to drive... but it looked sick, and sat low ALL the time, cant even fit a pack of smokes on its side under the rockers.. if a car that low is comfortably drivable the so is almost every car... bags are for pussies with bad taste.. leave em for the lo-lo's.. keep it out of trad customs. that will be all.
Just like finding a short in a wiring system, you need to do a process of elimination. Start isolating each component of the system, example: unhook the air spring from the system leaving the air line loose and check for air flow by activating the sytem. If you have no air flow out of the line you can ***ume the problem is further up the system. I have found bits of plastic wadded up in air lines, valves and fittings before leftover from manufacturing. Not to add to the anti-air spring drama, but. I am not really a fan and they do not fit my personal taste in aesthetics. But I did my research as a self taught suspension engineer. Many manufacturers DO in fact use air springs in vehicles made today, Mercedes, Audi, Lexus and a few others. These systems are fundementally the same as what is being discussed here but functionally are very different. For the most part these manufacturers use sleeve style membranes and chamberd air tanks to change spring rates and load capacities and ALL use a sophisticated computer control usually tied in with yaw, pitch and roll sensors that speak in concert with a ride management computer and traction control devices. Mercedes had two competing systems a few years ago ABC (Active Body Control) wich was an active hydraulic suspension system not unlike the one Lexus had (has) been using and the AirMatic (sp) system. Many of the automotive magazines picked them apart, truthfully the ride quality was pretty matched but the handling was annother thing entirely. The air system could not corner nearly as well as the active suspesnsion system. Result? Well marketing makes all the difference in the world and the phrase "riding on air" is so engraved in the American psyche that the actual winner got tossed to the sidelines. Does this mean it is impossible to build a good handling or a good riding air sus*****on, hell no. At the end of the day a spring is a spring whether it be made of steel, carbon fiber, silicone or air. The major thing to take away is proper selection of components and installing them correctly. Most people tend to "cheap" themselves into a corner by purchasing incorrect or insufficent components for their application. It would be helpfull if you know how much load your spring is supposed to support and at what spring rate, something that is fairly difficult to find a**** inexpensive air spring manufacturers. But information is available if you choose to use it.
The replys this guy has gotten are unreal! I don't recall him asking for an opinion, only help to solve a problem. Can't we be helpful without being critical. Some of the replys are helpful and I'm sure as a group we can solve his problem. Bagging a car is a matter of individual choise just like chopping a top. Try a 3" longer cup. Sounds as if you have too much wasted travel before your bags can lift it Or when it gets to a point where it can start lifting, the bag is inflated as far as it can physically go. Also remember that the front will require a lot more time to raise because of the weight involved. If you could install the cup and bag easily then this could be your problem. As some of the guys have said, make sure you have no restrictions also. Please advise what it was when you find the problem. Thanks ,BOBBY FORD
alright, I took off the front valve and hooked the front bag to my work compressor and it goes up a lil more(while the cars on the floor) but when i pick up my car from the lower A arm with my jack and then i fill the bags up and the bags fully extend, but when i lower the car with my jack while the bags are still extend, they get back to step one! so is my front clip to heavy?
Are you disconnecting your front circuit at the valve? This doesn't eliminate the plumbing to the bags. You still could have blockage or a kink in the system somewhere. Your 2,500lb bags are enough.
2500 pound bags should do it,i would thinkas for pressure 170 is pretty damn high ,consider the pressure rating of the lines and your tank etc etc,before you go any higher in pressure,do the bags have any funky shapes (bubbles)or anything like that?)are they used bags?
You shouldn't inflate the bag without having something limit the travel. And as said before 170psi is way more pressure in a bag than you should ever need. The rear of my '52 Cadillac rides at around 30psi. If you had 170psi in the bag and lowered you car on it, and it compressed the bag, something is wrong with the bag. Give us a model number....
i work on packaging machines that use solenoid valves similar to what your using and to test flow i diconnect the lines going to said componet and duct tape a kids ballon on the end of the line to check flow,simple and easy! elpolocko is on to some thing, the valves get full of plastic shavings also the exhaust muffler get plugged slowing down the system.
Con***ech 2500 4-Ply Single Port! my works compressor goes up to 160psi. i just tested the front valves with nothing in the out end of the valve and the flow of air is fast there when i hit the switch. well...........im going to add a couple more inches to the cups and see what happens after that.
There is a lot of stuff not used in racing,that is common on the street. Air Conditioning,Cruise Control,Automatic transmissions,radio,upholstery. Doesn't make it a bad idea. And IIRC,Airlift bags were commonly used in lower cl***es of drag racing in the '60s,to adjust the ch***is by changing wheel rates.
So you just tested the valve. Ok, what about the lines to the bags? Before you spend the time making new cups, see what you are getting at the bag!
all praise the weasel ,bag afficionado and supporter of all things DMV and government sanctioned..i think since you love legislation you should have a booth at all the shows..mooneyes,GNRS,billetproof,etc and hand out flyers about the evils of modifications and airbags, lets see how that would go down and oh yeah set up a few booths at various low rider shows,i know they would love to hear it,especially the legal stuff those guys love that stuff.
I think the bags are two small, I am an advocate of 2600 in the front a V8 car with A arms. you have to do some extra t******* in the spring pocket but it lifts higher and rides nicer. If you jack the car of a few inches and then put air into it will it lift at all off the jack (I am wondering about the moment force to bring the A Arms from a negative position to a flat or positive position. All my cars and my buddies cars (grecko54 I am not sure about he might have the 2500 in his truck) have always ran the 2600 lb firestone bags up front with no problems. if you have to run more then 100lbs to 120 lbs you have using to much pressure. jack up the front some, air up the bags, have a friend come over and listen to the bags as you lower the jack to see if you have blown a seal on the bag (***uming you have checked to see if the valves are working correctly.)
without seeing the setup,one possibility is that the bag is fully inflating before it picks up the car.what I mean is there's too much space for the bag to fill.you might need to make a bigger spacer to fill up the space.the way I set them up,because I like a low ride height, is I measure the distance from the top of the spring pocket to wherever your gonna mount the bottom of the bag with the suspension at fully slammed height.then measure the bag with it fully compressed,or what the manufacturer deems fully compressed height.then make up the difference in the spring pocket with a spacer.I hope this gives you something else to look at.
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