I recently purchased a 15 platinum and I'm Looking for input on coilovers VS a full air ride system.
My last ride was a 2012 f250 with an 8inch 4link with king remote shocks on all four corners. Just FYI.
(COILOVERS)
I have no knowledge on how these trucks ride with a coilover kit on them front or rear. I have seen some of PMF's work and very impressed with the black 6.4l and jcolemans platinum. But what was that truck designed for?
The reason I ask is I see the same set up on a lot of long travel buggies by me and they are beating the hell out of the triple bypass shocks, jumping, wheelies, and cruising over whoops. Were those truck designed for something similar? Do those shocks make the truck ride better on the street as well?
(AIR RIDE)
I have drove the kelderman truck, All in all I was impressed with the kit. Price not so much but I am not going to half ass it now
the rear felt solid and stiff like it could still tow anything you put behind it. the front had a noticeable bump steer but that could have been because of the 40x15.50 's and the 10 inch lift. I didn't expect a truck of this size to ride like a cushy Cadillac.
So what I am looking for is what would work best for a daily street driven truck of this size and the occasional trip to the sand on big holidays. 10-12 inches total lift with 24x14s 37 or 38 inch tires
A truck with front mounted air bags to me is a truck you put on the trailer and you take to shows. They are pretty difficult to get set up properly. First the obvious, your steering wheel can only be straight at one height and you can't just lower and raise it while driving down the freeway. Your axle will only be centered in the truck at one height due to the track rod. More then likely you will also have some bad street manners for example some bump steer due to the 4-link.
Then you have the obvious crap like leaking lines or leaking bags, or cracked welds... all stuff that can happen with kits like this.
One other downside to a front bag setup is the bag and shock combination. The bag acts like a spring but it changes with different air pressures. So essentially where the truck may ride the nicest at may be at the wrong spot on the shock. So the shock may match the stiffness/spring rate at a certain PSI and then not at other PSI.
So to do a proper setup takes a ton of time and effort. Just like looking at the picture above of that air ride setup. You can tell that someone didn't think about how that shock/air bag setup went together. Those bypasses are adjusted by an allen head. Now how do you get an allen wrench on the compression bypass to adjust it since it is pointed directly down into the bag.
I have also seen enough of these air bag setups get taken off trucks due to driveability or other issues. Then the owners are practically giving them away to get them off their trucks. Most people don’t want them.
When I used to work on the farm I spent thousands of hours behind a piece of equipment that was full air ride all the way around. Complete leveling system. I made the mistake once of leaving the leveling system on one time when I drove it out on the highway and I almost crashed it immediately. The setup wants to level out and when you hit a large enough bump the system trys to level out but it is slightly delayed and ends up being quite the white knuckled/butt puckering event...LOL
After mentioning that I learned that the guys that make these air suspension kits came from the farming industry. That explained why you see these cheap incorrect joints that are commonly used on farm equipment on these 15k air ride kits at SEMA. LOL
As far as a daily driver goes, NO I wouldn't do an air ride kit. If I actually had to choose one I would go with the guys in the farming industry over someone that has only built a few air ride trucks. I bet ever year at SEMA there are 10-15 new air ride kits from the Farmer dudes. So they would have way more miles under their belts then someone that has a few kits out there. To me that is important.
For a daily driver setup I would go with coilovers. If you actually are going to drive it all the time I would go with a standard kit from one of the big outfits. An Engineered mass produced kit is going to be easy to get, easy on the pocketbook, and is going to most likely drive down the road in a straight line (believe me this is an issue at SEMA…LOL).
There are a ton of outfits out there now that will build you a custom coilover kit. They can look at and copy someone elses kit but they have no real idea on exactly how or why it works. But 99% of the time this truck will never drive right or even really actually drive down the road (for looks only). Most of these guys have no idea how to match shock valving and spring rate, or understand what bump-steer is. They build it so it can sit at SEMA and be supported under its own weight and look cool. Which is great until they sell the truck to someone for 70-100k+ and they figure out that it is too dangerous to drive and then they have to spend another 10-20-30k to get it to drive down the road. LOL.
I have a full coilover setup front and rear on my truck. It does everything it isn’t supposed too. Rides awesome, fully adjustable (change out a few parts and I go from 12 to 16” of lift), adjustable ride quality with bypass shocks, handles great, tows what I need, and has been just a pleasure to drive over the last 4 years. It comes with a huge wealth of years of suspension knowledge and experience that I can call and BS with anytime…LOL. But I am pretty sure it would cost more then what you are looking to spend. But to get a CAD drawn fully designed system specific to your truck/lift height that drives down the road correctly costs quite a bit of money. If the person that is designing your system can’t tell you how many 0.0X degrees of bumpsteer are in their suspension design I would look elsewhere…..
You wouldn’t believe how many comments my friend and I got over our trucks when we brought them to SEMA. We went to a photo shoot for Truckin Magazine and guys kept asking how fast you could go, how the truck drove and steered….I didn’t think much of it until we had to drive to another location for pictures. Some of the POS SEMA trucks couldn’t even go over 25 mph down the road in a straight line. Many of those trucks ended up on the cover of the magazine…LOL. Definitely opened my eyes a lot on how the industry is.
So with that in mind I would go to the big outfits for the coilover kit. If it is ****ed up and doesn’t drive right you can call them and they will understand you and help fix it for you. You can drive your truck every day and it will work. People will still like it and you won’t have any issues selling it down the road either.
