etrailer | Firestone Ride-Rite Air Helper Springs Installation - 2020 Toyota Tacoma

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Full transcript: https://www.etrailer.com/tv-install-f...
Hey, everybody, Ryan here at etrailer. Today on our 2020 Toyota Tacoma, we're gonna be showing you how to install the Firestone Ride-Rite air helper springs for the rear axle. But before we get into that, I going to check 'em out and make sure they're gonna work for you. This is what your airbag is gonna look like installed underneath your truck and it's pretty straightforward. So essentially, these are just going to replace the factory jounce bumper. So originally you had a small, rubber, almost looked like a mound, attached here.

And all that does is prevent your suspension from bottoming out, don't really provide any additional support or adjustability and that's where the airbag is gonna come into play. It's gonna fill that gap in between your axle and the bottom of your frame and kind of act as a cushion almost, right And so you're gonna be able to adjust these from five to 100 PSI. Most people find themselves, you know, somewhere in the middle of that and that's really gonna help out. You know, when you're towing stuff or got things in the bed of your truck or anything along those lines, you'll be able to fine tune it and adjust that pressure to the ride that you find the best. When it comes to an airbag, even though you can adjust it and fine tune it, there is gonna be a little bit of maintenance involved.

These are gonna require a minimum of five PSIs, so that's something you're gonna have to kind of keep an eye on 'cause if you ignore that, the bag can potentially get damaged and, you know, that's not good. To help with that, if you want, and just to even help make adjusting them easier, you can always use an air compressor and usually you can control all the pressures back here right from your cab, so it's really cool. And a lot of times with the, how I mentioned the maintenance, a lot of times you can set 'em up in a way that it'll automatically kinda keep these maintained for you, whatever you set it at. So you don't even really need to think about it. If that's not something you're really interested in doing or you don't need a ton of adjustability, there are other enhancements available.

For example, Timbrens or SumoSpring type enhancement. Essentially it's almost a big jounce bumper, in a sense, that stays in place, you bolt it on there, you're done with, right You can't adjust 'em and you kinda get what you get, but, you know, it's definitely not a bad thing, 'cause you don't really have to worry about 'em. So it really just depends on how you plan on using your truck and how you plan on, you know, what are you gonna be towing and towing, how often are you gonna be towing and everything else like that. Other than that, at the end of the day, if you're looking to get a little bit better ride out of your Toyota and you know, have that adjustability to make towing a little bit better experience, airbags are definitely a really popular choice and a lot of people have good luck with them. As far as the install goes, these really aren't too bad.

A lot of times, airbags can be pretty easy or a real pain, these are definitely on the easier side. So something you should be able to do, you know, take a little time, set aside, stay patient and you should be able to get these on. But speaking of that, if you'd like to see how that's done, feel free to follow along. We'll go ahead and put 'em on together. To begin our installation, we're gonna be underneath the back of your truck and I just temporarily lowered and removed our spare tire. Give us some more room to work. It will be able to go back up once we're done. And then you want to essentially jack up your truck's frame and what we're trying to accomplish is to get the space in between our axle and the bottom of our frame to get bigger. That way we have more room to work. What we need to do is remove our factory jounce bumper and we're gonna try to get it as low as we can, essentially, as long as we cut it, you know, probably about even with these U-bolts here, we'll be in good shape. I'm gonna use a sawzall to cut this off. It's pretty thick rubber, so something like this will probably be your best bet. But with that said, be careful, you know, you don't wanna cut in any lines or anything and just make sure we get that out of the way. And the reason for doing that is so our airbag can clear. (sawzall whirring) So I got the jounce bumper completely cut off and this is what it looks like. And like I said, as long as you're about flush with the top of those U-bolts, you'll be in pretty good shape. This point we can move over to the workbench and start to as