Thread: Air Ride
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Old 11-02-2007, 03:14 PM
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krptonite krptonite is offline
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most cars that leave our shop seem to be on air ride these days but after fitting quite a few kits i am on the fence as to whether or not i would install it in my own car, if you are fitting the basic analogue gauge and switches type then there is not much to go wrong and are fairly reliable, i am in the process of doing a 64 impala at the moment and the new control arms look good and fit well but we have several unhappy customers with the digital setups even though they are more expensive, recently we fitted a road scraper type kit on an s10 with twin compressors and tanks with big lines and solenoids to lift or dump quicker and boy have we had problems, the front sway bar mounts on the arms are welded on at the wrong angles so the first time the air was dumped it bent the sway bar bolts into a 'j' shape!! not a big deal to put right but where is the quality control ? these are crucial to a safe vehicle , there were also 4 out of 5 pressure sensors that were faulty and were sending a low pressure signal to the controller which kept the compressors on permanently until they burnt out, i am not knocking air rides warranty though as they will replace parts and really try to help sort the problems , its not all their fault as i would think electrical items and solenoids are bought in from other suppliers.As an installer though we have to eat all the costs for putting the new parts on and have over 600 bucks into the s10 alone! I just think that for 6 g's you could have a pretty trick set of coilovers and have enough left for new suspension arms etc, see if you can take a ride in a vehicle with air to see if you can justify the expense, as the ride never seems to be as smooth as you might think it would be for the cost, but it does look damn cool to dump the car down when parked.
Once again i will say , i am not having a go at air ride just that i have been witness to some scary looking failures of several brands and none seem to have a lasting quality about them especially as a daily driver type vehicle.
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