Firestone Ride-Rite Rear Axle Air Helper Springs Installation - 2015 Chevrolet Silverado 2500

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Hi, everyone. Shane here with etrailer.com. Today, on a 2015 Chevrolet Silverado 2500, I wanna walk through how to install the Firestone Ride-Rite air helper springs for the rear axle. Adding suspension enhancement to your vehicle or to your truck is gonna give you a lot of different benefits. Maybe you carry loads in the back of the truck, maybe you carry 'em on your receiver, or maybe you tow a fifth wheel or a gooseneck trailer. Adding a suspension enhancement is gonna allow you to support that rear end of your vehicle to help support the weight that you're hauling.

If you've hauled trailers before, you'll notice without an enhancement system, when you put the weight on the back of the truck, it sags. Well, when it sags, it's affecting the rear axle because your suspension can't handle the extra weight. What it's also doing is it's raising the front end. The headlights are not aiming at the road. They're aiming up in the air, your wheels are gonna turn in, so it's gonna make uneven tire wear.

Breaking is gonna be affected. Steering is gonna be light. That can make for dangerous driving. Adding the suspension enhancement allows you to adjust where that pressure needs to be, depending on the load that you have in the vehicle or on the vehicle to get your vehicle back to that normal ride height so that you're driving safe again. The kit's gonna come with two valves here.

This allows you to air each bag up separately. So let's say maybe you have more weight on one side of the truck, that allows you to add more air pressure into that bag to help support that side a little bit more. And maybe you're wanting to make it a little bit easier on yourself. You don't have to go find an air line or gauge each time you fill up your bags when you're ready to tow a trailer. There are compressors available, wireless compressors available and analog compressors.

I recommend going with the wireless, it's gonna make it a lot easier. You don't have to run a bunch of wires or air line tubes inside the vehicle. It'll allow you to use your cell phone or remote. Maybe you're like our customer here and you pull one trailer. Maybe you have a gooseneck camper or a fifth wheel camper. You know what the air pressure needs to be. You can sit in your truck, push the button when you're ready to hook up to your trailer, it airs the bags up, you hook up. When you get to where you're going, you push a button, it releases the air down to the minimum pressure you have set. You can find those different compressors here at etrailer. Now, let's compare these Firestone bags to other types of bags, for instance, Air Lift. Air Lift's gonna give you the same benefits with the exception of one thing. Firestone bags, if you have to go to get your vehicle worked on, you can let the axle hang or you can allow the mechanics to allow the axle to hang, maybe they need to change tires. With the Air Lift, they cannot. They have to support that axle when you're getting it worked on. Now that we've gone over the benefits of adding air suspension to the back of your vehicle, let's go ahead and show you the before and after when we add weight to the back of the truck. Before we add our weight, we're gonna go ahead and get the normal ride height without any weight in the back of the truck. We're gonna go right down the center of the wheel to the bottom of the wheel well. Here in the back, we're at about 42 1/2 inches. Let's go ahead and take the measurement at the front. Here in the front, we're at 39 3/4. Now, let's go ahead and add the weight and see how much change we get. Now, we've got about 1500 pounds in the back of the truck. Let's go ahead and take the measurement again. If you remember, we we're at 42 1/2. Now, we're at 40 1/4. So we've dropped about 2 1/2 inches. If we hit closer to what the weight can handle for this truck, it's gonna drop even more. That's when you're gonna start affecting everything. You're gonna put that unnecessary stress on your axle, tire wear, headlight aim, all of that. Now, let's go ahead and check the front and see where we're at. Now, if you remember, we we're at 39 and 3/4 here, which is remaining at 39 3/4. But again, if we get back to what this truck can actually handle with weight in the back, it's gonna raise this front up even more. Now, let's go ahead and get in the shop, get the bags on, and see what it does once we have air pressure in there. Now, we've got our bags installed, same amount of weight in the back of the truck. We've got about 48 psi in each bag. We'll go ahead and take another measurement. And we're back up to our normal ride h