Firestone Ride-Rite Air Helper Spring Installation - 2010 Ford F-150

Installation of a Firestone Ride-Rite Air Helper Spring on a 2010 Ford F-150

Today on our 2010 Ford F150, we're going to install the Firestone Ride-Rite Air Helper Spring, part number F2525. We've already gone ahead and raised the vehicle up and removed the rear wheel. Now, we need to go ahead and remove the rear jounce bumper. There is a bolt up through the center of the bumper that attaches it to the frame. Now, the jounce bumper will not be reinstalled, but you do want to save the bolt as it will be reused when installing the new upper bracket for the Ride-Rite springs. Next, we're going to do some assembly.

We're going to take our air bag and the upper bracket and attach them together. We'll be using two flange nuts to secure the upper bracket to the air bag. As we go along, we'll torque the specification each of our fastener as necessary. Now, with our upper bracket installed, we're going to take our angle valve with the preinstalled sealing and go ahead and thread it into the top of the air bag. It may be necessary to put your air bag into a vice or attachment to help hold it while you install the angle air valve.

Keep in mind when installing the angle valve that you want to point it in the direction you'll be running your air lines, alright. Now, with our upper bracket and angle valve installed, we're going to add the lower bracket. Take our threaded bolt through the bottom of the bracket into the air bag. We'll be using the supplied hardware with the preinstalled sealer. For this fastener we'll only be doing finger tight at this time.

We're going to leave it loose 'til after we get our air bag installed. Now, we'll go ahead and leave that assembly set aside as we're going to install the upper frame bracket next. Our upper frame bracket is going to sit in the position of the old jounce bumper. We'll take the old jounce bumper hardware bolt and reinstall it through the upper frame bracket. I'll go ahead and tighten it down.

It will draw the bracket up into place. Now with our upper frame bracket in place, we're going to take the bolt plate and put it through a hole in the back of the frame, and then we'll take our bolt through the front of the frame bracket and frame. The bolt plate has these nice handles on them that we can also bend as necessary to get them in place. Once we get our first one installed, we'll just go ahead and repeat the same process for the back one. Now, we've got both fasteners in finger tight we're going to go ahead and leave them alone this time. We're going to go back to our air bag assembly and we've got pre-setup, and we're going to set it into place. Now with our assembly in position, we'll go ahead and install our bolts from inside to outside on our upper spring bracket to the upper frame bracket. And now, we'll secure it with our half-inch flange nut. It will be a total of four, two on the front of the bracket, two on the back bracket. Now with all four installed, we'll go ahead and tighten them down and then torque to specifications. Now with those four fasteners tightened down, we can go back and tighten down the two frame fasteners, and then we'll go ahead and torque all six to specifications. Now with the other part of our air spring installed and tightened down, we need to tighten down the lower portion. We'll be using the supplied bale clamps and 1/2-inch nuts to secure up. This will get secured underneath the lower leaf springs. There will be two nuts per bale clamp, one on the inner half of this spring and one on the outer. And we've got one at the front of our air bag assembly and one on the back. Alright, now, we're ready to go ahead and tighten those down. Keeping in mind when you tighten down the bale clamps to tighten them down as evenly as possible. Alright, now with our bale clamps secured, we're going to go back and tighten down the lower bracket to the air bag valve. Now with our air bag installed here on the driver's side, we'll go ahead and repeat the same process on the passenger's side. With this application, we've chosen we're going to drill holes on either side of the license plate to install our inflation valve. So I'm going to go ahead and make a couple of marks here in the bumper and then drill out my hole. I use a smaller bit to create a pilot hole and then drill it out to our pilot side. When drilling out your holes, you'll be careful that you're not drilling into anything behind your attachment. Now, we can go ahead and mount our inflation valve. The inflation valve will go from the back side up. Inflation valve will get a flat washer and it goes from the back side of the hole, then we'll put on another flat washer and secure it with a nut. After we get it in position, we'll go ahead and tighten it down. Now, I can go ahead and repeat the same process on the passenger's side. We will start routing your air line. We'll go ahead and put the tape over the end of our air line so that when we're routing it, we don't pick up any dirt or debris in the line. As part of our installed kit, we also get a protected cover that we can feed over the line. I'll go ahead and slide that on the line and into place. Now, we're ready to go ahead and start running our line. As much as possible, I am going to wrap my line to the frame. This will help protect the line and keeps this staying away from moving components such as the suspension or tearing or excessive heat such as the exhaust. Now that we routed it to the end of the frame, I can go head and remove the tape, and in this case, I'm going to go ahead and take my tubing cutter and just cut off a little end of this. This will ensure that I've got a good clean square cut on my tubing and I'll go directly into the air valve. We'll press our air line firmly into place and then give it a small tug just to make sure it's seeded well. Now, we'll go back, cut the line, and insert it into the air bag. Now, we'll go ahead and take the other end of our line and I can fit it to the edge of the air valve, make a mark, and then again take my tubing cutter to make a nice square clean cut. Now with our line cut, we can go ahead and take the protective cover applied in our installed kit, apply it over the line, and insert it to the end of the line into the angle valve. Again, we'll press it firmly into place. Give it a small tug and make sure it's seeded. Now, we'll go ahead and repeat the same process on the passenger's side. Now with our installation complete, we'll go ahead and test our system. We'll supply air to the air valve and air up our air bags. It's a good idea to check for leaks at both the angle valve coming out of the bag and the back of your inflation valve. Once we're completed testing for leaks, we can go ahead and reinstall the spare tire. That will complete the install of our Firestone Ride-Rite Helper Air Springs, part number F2525, on our 2010 Ford F150.