Why Not To Use Air Suspension On Your Off-road Van

Hey guys, what's up? I'm Jeremy from Wild Tech Designs, and today we are hanging out in the shop, and today I want to talk to you guys a little bit about airbags. Whether it be a RV or van, a lot of our customers always ask, hey, I want to lift my van or RV. Could I just put an airbag on it to get the lift? So it's kind of like a win-lose question here. Let's kind of talk about the pros and cons of airbags, why we typically, well, why I never put them on a vehicle, and normally we're taking them off. That's where today's awesome donor came from was an RV that we took the airbag off. So this is what an airbag is going to look like. This is a double bellow bag, and what that means is it's got two bellows, so when it expands, it's going to have two. This is actually going to mount on your frame. So this was the top part, this was the bottom part. Actually, I could even have that backwards now, but either way, that doesn't matter, it's an airbag. So anyways, I want to show you guys, let's take a measurement of this thing, what it is compressed, so I'm going to kind of push down on this thing, and you can see that, let's just say to the top of the bracket, we're coming in at about three and a half inches. So this is what your suspension, if you did not have the airbag filled up. Now granted, I don't want to over confuse this, and sometimes I do that, because I just ramble, you know, like you guys say that too. So anyways, let's fill up this airbag, let's look at what it looks like filled up, and what it's going to look like when you need to lift your vehicle. So let's say your vehicle right now is sitting two inches low in the back, you want some more height out of it. Normally this would be hooked up to a compressor, or you would have a line running to the exterior part of your vehicle. So let's just say we're going to put a little bit of air in there, because you want it to sit up a little bit more. So here's the thing about an airbag, and granted this is just me and I'm pushing on it, but now here's the thing, is you're going to have a natural resistance, so now when your vehicle is driving, this is what it's driving on, it's not really driving on the spring as much as it is the airbag being used as a crutch or cheat in order to get the rear of it up. That's part of the downfall in it, is this isn't really going to compress all the way, and that's what you want, especially once you go to our lift kit. You're going to get a lot more articulation and travel out of it, and this is going to limit it. So let's just say that's where you're at, two inches, you have it all filled up, and say now you want to be like, okay, I want even more in it because I want it to sit even taller. So there, now I got this thing all the way filled up in there so that it's getting a ton of height out of there. Now here's the problem. Now you've essentially put a rock, might as well just go get a two-by-four from Home Depot, stick the two-by-four in there, and let it hold up your vehicle. I mean, what's the difference? Other than adjustability, there's not really the plus in it. So the problem is is now when this is mounted on your RV, this is not going to move. Yes, it's going to hold it up, but it's also not going to allow your vehicle to articulate. So now when we come back and measure this, we're at nine, we were at three and a half, so we got about five and a half inches of movement. Typically in one of these RVs, we're getting like 10 plus inches of travel, of articulation, of wheel movement out of the back of it. So by doing something like this, we've taken that amount and we've cut it in half to cheat you up, to cheat you up sitting up a little bit higher, you know, to give it a little bit stiffer ride. Who really wants that? So not this guy. I mean, the whole point of putting this lift or lifting your RV, you want to improve the suspension. That's the key to this whole thing. And this really isn't going to do that. We can go outside. We have an RV here. I can show you guys kind of what I'm talking about on this RV and the difference and what it looks like, this wheel, with it fully extended out, just how much travel this thing has compared to even at ride height, what it has. You'll see that it uses a lot more than this. So I'm sure I'm missing things. I'm totally doing this like, I'm winging this, you know, winging. So if I miss something in this part of it, I am by no means an expert on airbags. So maybe there, I missed something, you know, who knows? There are some bags I want to say made by Daystar, which are pretty cool, where the airbag is going to mount and then it's going to have a cup on the bottom. And it actually allows the airbag to come out of the cup for those vehicles with more articulation. So of course that's a plus, but really, I'm just going to put like one of those, let's put one of those like big old circles around this with like an X and say, just say no to airbags. Just say no, you know? But anyways, guys, that's a little bit about this. Let's go outside, let's check out this RV. And if I can think of something else to put in this video to show you guys, to help you, I will. But like I said, comment below. I always rely on your guys' comments, questions, in order to make more videos so that I can help you guys out. Let's go outside, it's fun, it's nice. So these are the airbags that one lucky customer used to have on his RV and we took them off because he did not need them anymore once we added the leaf springs to his RV. Now, a lot of people ask, well, hey, why can't I run them on there still once I put your lift kit on the RV? And I wanna show you guys, so we jacked this thing way up in the air. We do still have a little bit of clearance down here so it is completely off the ground. But I wanna show you the leaf springs. We're gonna compare where this would sit on the frame and why that they will not work, at least this style of airbag will not work with our springs and why we don't really recommend it and just really why they limit all of your wheel travel. I mean, there's so much room for activities right there. This is the benefit of going with a set of springs. So let's jump under this thing. I'm gonna make Austin get down and dirty. We're gonna go check these springs out. Let's have some fun. All right, guys, so normally this airbag is mounting right here on top of your leaf spring perch, okay? The bottom of it would. Now, the top of it is gonna mount all the way up here on your frame and you can tell when you, I'll have him come back to this other side and show you. We're about seven inches away. So let me move this up to where it would sit on the frame so you can see if it sat on the frame right there and you could show you, we looked at where it used to mount or where it would mount if it was mounted on the bottom of your axle. So you can see we would lose about seven inches, let's just say, of articulation or down travel and that's the whole thing. If you were going to be taking these things on, let's just say you do go that crazy camp spot and it does articulate. I mean, we're talking in and out of driveways. It will also articulate a lot and you don't want that articulation to stop because then that's the problem is when your wheels then would not be in contact with the pavement and you'll actually get like one side of these will actually hang up and I've seen that happen. So that's definitely something that's huge and negative on there. All right guys, so I hope that was somewhat helpful seeing it on the RV, how we're doing these things or how we're not doing them actually but just to kind of understand the concept behind airbags, how they work and what they do. I'm gonna definitely do another follow-up video maybe showing these things actually working on an RV so it helps you guys out even more but as for now with this airbag and this video, I would say we're done guys, that's it. I gotta get back to work and yeah. ♪♪♪