Firestone Ride-Rite Air Helper Springs - 2007 Dodge Ram 1500

Installation of the Firestone Ride-Rite Air Helper Springs on a 2007 Dodge Ram 1500

Today we are working on a 2007 Dodge Ram 1500, we will be installing Firestone Air Spring Kit part number F2286. Per the instructions it is not necessary to take the wheels off the vehicle, but we found that this application is much easier if you do so. Our first step will be to remove the manufactures bum stops. They are two fasteners, one on each side. Now that we have our bum stop removed, we will come over to our air bag and get it set up. :33

Our first step will be to install our angle valve. There are two points of interest when installing your angle valve. One, you want to make sure you get it seated securely all the way into the sealant that is already on the angle valve. Two, we want to make sure it is pointing in the direction of where we are going to install our air line. When in the truck, our air bag will sit similar to this. Next we are going to install the heat shield, this is only necessary on the passenger side, and then our top mounting bracket. We will hold those two on with flange nuts. Before we fully tighten down our upper mount, we are going to take our mounting bolt and slip it in there, as the heat shield my be in the way to get it installed later on. We can go ahead and tighten them down now. 1:20

With our top mount set up we can turn it over and mount the bottom. You can see there are two holes here, we will use the one that lines up best with the axle and the orientation of the top mount. We will install it finger tight at this time. Now we can go ahead and set our new bag in the vehicle. With our upper mounting bolts lined up, we can go ahead and tighten them down. You will notice here that our forward most hole lines up best with our lower bracket, bag, and upper mount. So we are going to go ahead and tighten it down now. With our bag set, we can go ahead and put on our hardware for our lower mount. Now I can go ahead and install the bail clamp and wrap around the shackle bracket and go through our lower mount. We will install two flange nuts to secure it. We can tighten these down now. When tightening down your bail clamp you want to make sure that you do it evenly. With our bail clamp tightened down we can install the bolts for our lower clamp. One on the front and backside of the lower bracket. Once again we want to make sure we tighten it down evenly. With all of our hardware fastened and tightened down, it is time to run our air line. 2:56

When running our air line we want to stay away pinch points, such as moving parts in the suspension and the heat from the exhaust. It looks like our best avenue for running this airline is through our frame. With the majority of our air line run, we are going to locate a simple mounting point for our air fitting. We are going to mount our air line to the back bumper here. We will drill a pilot hole, and then a larger hole to put our fitting in. With our hole drilled we can install our air fitting. Put a washer over it, install our nut, and tighten it down. Now we can get back underneath our vehicle and install our air line. The key when making your air line connection is to make sure your cut is clean, not crimped. Push in, give it a slight pull to make sure it is locked in. Then lets go back to our air bag. Figure out our length, take my tubing cutter and cut my air line to fit. Push it in, give it a tug. Our airline is installed. Take a zip tie and secure our line in the back and cut off the extra. Put some air into the back and check for leaks. With our air line checked and everything installed, that finishes our install of Firestone air bags part number F2286.