etrailer | Mount: Air Lift Ride Control Air Helper Springs on a 2009 Ford F-150

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Full transcript: https://www.etrailer.com/tv-install-a...
Today in our 2009 Ford F-150 we're going to take a look at and also show you how to install the Air Lift Ride Control Air Helper Springs for the rear axle. Part number is AL59544. Now this is the common problem most people have when they're looking into air bags, too much rear vehicle squat. We've got our water tank loaded up here just to simulate either pen weight or tongue weight or even a load in the back of your track. What's happening is the back of the truck gets pressed down. Now the main effects that you're going to have on your vehicle with this situation is going to be excess wear and tear on that rear suspension and also a rougher ride.

When our truck squats, we have a lot less suspension travels so the likelihood of frame to axle contact is pretty real. As a side effect, the front end of the truck also comes up. The weight is not evenly distributed anymore or distributed as it should be, so as the back of the truck goes down, the front of the truck comes up. Now in the front of the truck with that weight not being down on our tires, that reduces our handling and our stability. We're not going to have nearly as good brake and when we turn our tires aren't going to have as much pressure down making contact. Also with that weight coming off, the steering geometry changes and typically you'll see excess tire wear.

The headlight beams are also going to be on an angle that's unnatural, they're going to be angled up slightly so it decreases our visibility as we head down the road. All right, now with our load back in the truck and our air bags installed, we're just going to provide air pressure in. That's going to level out the vehicle, getting it back to that factory ride height we had earlier. Just check it with a tape measure and when we hit the right spot we'll be ready to hit the road. Now we can really see what a difference those air bags make. We've got the same load in the same vehicle and we're right back at factory ride height.

It's taken about 60 psi to get us there out of the 100 psi operating range and it's really ideal. We've taken a lot of that stress and strain off these rear leaf springs. We're not putting that on those air bags. That's going to help this last a lot longer. The front end's right back down where it should be.

It's returning the steering geometry to where it needs to be. Also puts that weight back down so the handling, braking characteristics, they're all going to be returned to where they were. Now, when you don't have a load in the vehicle, the handling of the truck is going to improve slightly, as a byproduct. If you look through the customer reviews, there's a lot of people that say they really like the way their truck rides and handles. People have noticed when they're hauling, say, a fifth-wheel camper with air bags on the vehicle, it reduces the amount of jarring that happens inside of the camper so all of your stuff's going to stay safer. The air bag system is going to help to reduce that shock and jarring that goes back because we don't have that axle to frame contact through that jounce bumper anymore. Now we can head inside, we'll take a look at a few more features that the air bags have to offer. They're going to offer up to 2,000 pounds of support. But we do want to keep in mind we don't take what our truck's rated for an add 2,000 pounds to it. The air bags are designed to take the brunt of the force off of your suspension system, making it last longer, not increasing the carrying capacity of your vehicle. Although we can get up to the upper ends of the vehicle's safe load limit and do it safety without all that squat and that loss of steering feel. We have dual inflation valves. This is going to allow for left and right leveling. When you have off center loads in the back of your truck or if you've got an in-bed style camper with a water tank on one side, that's going to give you left and right sag and that's where we'll be able to use these to inflate one side maybe a little bit more than the other to get everything leveled back out and handling correctly. Now the air bag kits are a really straightforward system to install. We've got custom brackets that are designed to work with the vehicle frame, so we don't have to worry about cutting, drilling or really anything like that. The bottom bracket's the same way, it just uses U-bolts to go around the leaf spring. Now the brackets are nice heavy-duty steel material, they're going to have a black powder coat finish on them. Those are going to last for a very long time, just like our air bags. These helper springs designed for the Ford F-150 are for the light