Firestone Level Command II - Dual-Gauge w/ Heavy-Duty Compressor - Dual Function

Video Transcript for Firestone Level Command II Installation - 2011 GMC Sierra

Today on this 2011 GMC 3500, we're going to install the Firestone Air Accessory Kit, part number F2219. Our first step is going to be mounting the gauges for our accessory kit. The customer has chosen to mount the gauges in the glove box. First, what I did is made a custom bracket so they will seat deep enough in the glove box and still be able to close the door. What I need to do is go ahead and open the door all the way, releasing the safety latch here. I'll be using my gauges as a template to draw out so we can cut out the back of the glove box to create a depth that we need to mount our gauges.

Now, what I'll do is take a Rota zip tool and cut out the box. Now, we'll be able to mount our gauge set and still be able to close the door. With the back of the box cut out, you can see how our gauge is going to look once they're mounted. Before I mount my gauges because of the tight spaces behind the glove box, I'm going to make my electrical and hose connections first then we'll mount it. Now, we need to go ahead and route our electrical wires and our air line.

To do this, I'm going to run it underneath the door sill trim to the back seat to a grommet where we can route it underneath the vehicle. We'll have electrical going to our compressor and the hose is going not only to our compressor but to our tank that we're including in this kit. Let's go ahead and start taking apart our interiors so we can start our routing. Now, we're just going to go ahead and push the carpeting up so that we can get to our routing. Underneath the carpeting here about the center behind the passenger's side in front of the back seat is a grommet that we'll be using.

Now, we'll go ahead and take our air line and start routing it up and I'm going to get it into the glove box. We'll push it up underneath the carpeting and behind the kick panel. To make it a little easier for myself, I'll go ahead and remove the kick panel also. Now that we've got it routed into the glove box, I'll take my other end and start routing it to the grommet that we're going to feed it underneath the truck with. The key when routing your air line in your electrical lines is to stay away from excessive heat such as the exhaust or moving components such as your steering or suspension.

In this case when we're routing on the interior of the vehicle, we want to stay away from areas that are going to be kicked, pinched, pushed, if they're underneath the carpeting where they'll get smashed by occupants going in and out or staying away from the moving seats that can also damage the wire or air line. Now, well go ahead and take a drill bit the size of our air line and drill a hole to the plastic grommet, being careful not to go too deep that we catch the carpeting on the other side. Now, we've got our air line run for our air tank, part number F9245. We'll go ahead and run a separate line that's going to run to our compressor. We'll repeat the same process as we did for the air line for the tank. Now with my air lines already ran outside the vehicle, I'm going to go ahead and drill my hole and run the electrical the same way. We're running a white wire off our wiring harness inside, up to the gauges. Now that we're inside the cab, I'll go ahead and pull it up to the gauges and route it in behind the glove box where we'll be mounting our gauges. Now, we've got our signal wire run to our gauges and our two air lines. We need to run a power wire. Our power wire we need to connect into the running light circuit of the vehicle. The easiest way for me to make that connection is to run a wire from the rear bumper right here where we can hook into the tail light circuit for the running lights. Make our connection and then we'll run it up into the cab the same way we did our white wire and air lines. We'll peel back the loom around the two wires. You see one is black and one is brown. To connect into the circuit, the brown wire, we'll take a quick connector. Run it to the inside of my quick connector and then add the power wire that we're running to our gauges. I'll go ahead and crimp it down. Now, I'm going to take some black tape and wrap everything back up. Now, I'll take the wire we just connected to the running lights, run it through the frame up to our grommet into the cab just as we did the white wire and the two air lines. We'll route it in behind the glove box and then we can take our cluster and make our connections. Now, we're ready to go ahead and connect our gauges to our hoses. Before we do that, we need to soften the hoses up a little bit so I'm sending in some warm water so that we can soften up the plastic of the hoses and slide them onto the gauges. Now, we can go ahead and connect our lines once they've softened up enough. There's one. I'm going to go ahead and soften up the other line a little longer and connect it to my bottom. This one, I'll go after the tank and then from the air tank to the air bag. The bottom one will be from our compressor. With our air lines connected, we can now go ahead and make our ground and power connections. We have one black wire for our ground and one set of white wires for ground. Here are the three wires that we need to ground. I'm going to go ahead and cut this connector off, extend these two wires so it's the same as the length as the ground wire coming out of the barb for the gauges. Cut the end connector off. We'll go ahead and add a butt connector and then we'll take a piece of black wire. Put it into our butt connector and crimp it down. We can extend it the same length as our other ground wire. Strip it back. We'll go ahead and twist thes two together and add a ring terminal. Our grounds will then be prepped and ready for us to make our ground connection to the steel up onto the dash. Now, I'm going to go ahead and make my power connections before we attach our ground. Our other two white wires are our supply wires to the gauge buttons. We're going to go ahead and use a butt connector and attach it to our white wire that will be coming from our compressor. We got our signal wire to our switch. Now, we need to connect our power wire. Connect to the same wire that we ran from the tail light or run in light circuit. Now, we're ready to go ahead and make our ground connection. With our ground wire installed, we'll go ahead and install our mounting screws. With my gauges installed, I'll now go ahead and reinstall the interior. Okay, before I install my air compressor, I want to go ahead and prep the air filter line. Before we can install the fittings for the line, we're going to soak them in some warm water to make it easier to install the barb fittings onto the line. Once you get the hose good and hot, go ahead and push on your barb to fitting. There's one side and now I'll go and do the other. Now, we're ready to go ahead and install our compressor. For this application, the customer has chosen to place the compressor and tank underneath the vehicle. We custom made some mounting brackets to install them to. Let's go ahead and install our compressor first. With our compressor mounted, we'll go ahead and install our tank. With all four of my fasteners in position, we can go ahead and tighten them down. All right, with that way installed and tightened down, we'll go ahead and repeat the same process for the other three. Now with our tank and our compressor mounted, we can continue routing our air line and our wires to both our compressor and our tank. Since we ran them down the passenger's side, we're going to use this brace and crossover tube to carry our wires to the driver's side to make our connections to the tank and to the compressor. Once we have our length, we'll go ahead and take our tubing cutter. Cut off the excess of the air line. We'll go ahead and thread in our NTP nipple. You can see that from the manufacturer, it already had sealant on the threads. We'll run the nipple in as far as possible to the end of the sealant to get a good tight fit so that your system doesnt leak. With the lineup we installed, I can go ahead and feed in my air line. Push in, pull out, and my air line is locked in. We'll go ahead and repeat the same process as we ran our other air line over to the compressor. Be careful when tightening in your compressor and not to overtighten it and crack the housing. With the air lines run and installed, we've got our wires ran over to the compressor, we need to go ahead and mount the relay. Here into the side of the frame is a perfect location. We'll just use a self-threading screw and install it, and fasten it here to the frame. With our relay mounted, we'll be able to make our power connection from the relay to our compressor. Let's take our battery wire from the relay and route it up to the battery. I'm going to follow the manufacturer's wiring harness along the frame up into the engine compartment. With our wire fed up into the engine compartment, go ahead and pull it up here pass the battery. I'll use a black zip tie to secure it back here then I'm going to route it around the fuse box to the battery. We'll go ahead and add a ring terminal and then we can make our connection to the positive battery terminal. Now, before I make my connection with the battery, I'm going to go ahead and remove the fuse. Now, we can make our connection to the positive battery terminal. Now that we're connected to the battery, I'm going to go ahead and leave the fuse out until I make my final connections underneath at the compressor. We've got two more wires to connect here from the compressor. We need to make a ground connection here to the frame. Let's go ahead and do that now. With that ground connection made, we'll go ahead and connect our two power wires. I will take some black tape and tape them up. With that done, I'll take some zip ties and secure our wires here above the frame rail. With my compressor connected and our wiring done, we now need to run a line out of the back of the tank to our rear airbags. I'll go ahead and install the nipple and then start running the line. I'll go ahead and run my line before I make my connection. We're going to run an air line back to the rear airbags and then we'll T to each one. With my air line ran in the frame to the back of the vehicle, I'll go ahead and make my connection here at the air tank. With my air line here to the back of the vehicle, I'm going to go ahead and cut and then insert my T. With our T connector installed, I'll go ahead and run the line to both the driver's and passenger's side airbags. All right, there with our connection to the passenger's side airbag, now I'll go back to my T and make my connection there, and then use some plastic zip ties to secure my line. Now, I can go to the driver's side and make my connection there. Now, we're ready to go and install our fuse. Now, we're going to run our air filter line along the frame towards the engine compartment. The reason for running it to the engine compartment is because the area thats closest to our compressor will be dry and free of a lot of dirt and debris. We'll just use some black plastic zip ties to secure our line. Now, we can go ahead and install our air filter housing on our air filter line. When tightening the air filter, be careful not to overtighten it. Once it's secured, I'm going to go ahead and run it up into the engine compartment and then secure the line in the air filter itself with some zip ties. With our fuse installed, that completes the installation our Air Accessory Kit, part number F2219, with air tank, part number F9245, on our 2011 GMC 3500.