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When heavy trailers or bed loads make the rear end sag, steering and braking can feel unpredictable. The LoadLifter 5000 air springs add up to 5,000 lbs of load-leveling support to keep your vehicle riding level. That means better handling, safer headlight aim, and even tire wear—whether you’re hauling a camper, a load of lumber, or a full trailer. By taking strain off the factory suspension, these springs help keep everything balanced and under control when the weight piles on.
Every load drives differently, so it helps to dial in your suspension for the day’s job. You can inflate each LoadLifter 5000 spring independently between 5 psi and 100 psi for precise support. Add more air when towing or carrying heavy cargo to eliminate squat and sway, then drop pressure when unloaded for a smoother ride. Manual inflation valves and air lines are included so you can mount them where they’re easy to reach, typically at the bumper.
Uneven pavement and trailer bounce can wear you out fast. These air springs use durable 2-ply, fabric-reinforced rubber to reduce sway and absorb road shock for a smoother ride. Air Lift’s exclusive upper and lower roll plates protect the air bags from contact damage while boosting their load capacity. The result is a steadier ride with less bounce, wobble, or bottoming out when the truck is working hard.
Reliability matters when you depend on your suspension every day. The LoadLifter 5000’s endcaps are made from high-strength Zytel nylon that’s lighter, stronger, and more corrosion resistant than steel—so they won’t rust or leak over time. Each kit includes heavy-duty brackets, hardware, manual valves, and air lines for installation. With Air Lift’s lifetime warranty and 60-day satisfaction guarantee backing it up, this setup is built for the long haul.
Videos are provided as a guide only. Refer to manufacturer installation instructions and specs for complete information.
We're going to be taking a look at and showing you how to install Air-Lifts LoadLifter 5,000 Air Helper Springs. Before you install your airbags, you want to make sure you take a measurement of your factory ride height because this is ideally where we want our vehicle to be at all times. So here at the back we are at about 43 inches. And then we are going to go check our front. And on the front we're measuring about 39 and three quarter inches.We've now got about a thousand pounds of water here that we're going to place in the back of our truck and we're going to see how our factory suspension handles it. So we are going to put this in here now and we'll see where we're at.
And now with all this weight in the back of our vehicle, we've dropped down to 41 and a half inches. So an inch and a half less with all this weight in the back than where we we're at before. Now I guarantee you when we go to the front, the front's also going to be lifted up. So what this does is it causes the tires at the front, the geometry of the suspension is going to change, which is going to cause you to have less tire road contact. So you're going to have decreased performance there.It's also going to affect your braking performance because of the less surface area you have on your tire contact to the road as well.
And your headlights are also going to be aimed up towards the sky. And sure enough, when we come here to check the front, we're a half an inch higher. And while that may not seem like much, a half an inch on your headlights, because the further the distance they go out, the further they're going to be up, it's actually quite substantial. And you'd be surprised how much of your visibility you lose at night when you've got the front end just a little bit higher.We've now got our airbags installed and I've placed the weight in the back of our truck once again. I've aired the bags up, let's recheck our ride height.
And with our airbags installed now, we're sitting just under 43 inches. So we're basically right back to that factory ride height. We're less than a 16th of an inch from where we're supposed to be. And in the front, we're going to recheck as well. We're right back to where we started at 39 and three quarter inches, which means our headlights are going to be pointing at the correct direction.
And the geometry over suspension is going to be correct, giving us the best contact between the road and our tires so we can ensure that we're going to have optimal handling and braking performance, regardless of what we're hauling behind us.We've now loaded up our vehicle with about a thousand pounds worth of water weight. We're going to take it out on our test course and we're going to see how it handles. So we're going to come into our uneven bumps section first. And you feel how it's thrown aside, aside a little bit. It does kind of not want to spring back as quick as I'd like it to because you can see it's really kind of thrown us around a little bit here. We're now coming into the normal bump section where it's kind of like simulating a speed bump in a parking lot. And every time we go over in the back, you can really feel it dip back down pretty heavy.Now we're going to go over to our slalom. We're going to see how it affects us in some evasive maneuvers. Oh boy, yeah, and I don't want to do it too much here. You can feel the weight, how it wants to side us to. One side almost wants to lean as we turn.So in the bump sections, it didn't feel too bad. The suspension on this truck's pretty stiff. But there in the slalom, it gets a little sketchy when you really have an invasive maneuver. It kind of wants to roll the body pretty hard. So let's get back in and get the airbags on and then we'll have to test course again and see where we're at.We've got our airbags installed. Now, we're going to head back out on the test course. We've loaded up from the back of the vehicle again with our thousand pounds of water weight and we're going to go into our uneven bumps section first. And I can already tell that with the bags installed here, the suspension does feel much different. It's not an uncomfortable amount of stiffness, but it is definitely noticeable. I can tell that on our own even bumps here, that we don't have as much rocking back and forth coming off of each bump. It returns to a straightness much faster, but it is just a little bit stiffer.So now we're going to go into the straight bumps, which is kind of like your speed bumps you'd have in an apartment complex. And the front feels nice and soft like it did before and in the back, I can definitely tell it is stiffer than it was before. The stiffness is a little bit uncomfortable, but it does keep our vehicle right where we need to be much faster. We don't have as much bouncing up and down in the back.Let's head over to our slalom now where I expect we're going to have drastic increase in performance. And now in our slalom, we're going to start turning. And oh yeah, this is really where you're going to notice this. We've got a thousand pounds back there and I don't feel like I'm being thrown around at all. It's still noticeable you're hauling that weight when you go over the bumps due to how the airbags are stiff and you do feel that weight going up and down. But man, in an evasive maneuver situation, I would feel so much more comfortable driving now than I did before.So in the end of our test scores driving with no air bags versus with airbags loaded up with a thousand comes of water, my overall feeling of the system is that it's going to be fantastic if safety is what your biggest concern is. Over on the slalom, I had much more confidence in the control I had in the vehicle. I just felt like I could take those turns and the weight in the back wasn't slinging me around. I just really felt like we had a good grip on the road.Now, when we came into our bumps section there with the airbags installed, it did seem a bit stiffer. It was not as comfortable as a ride as it was with no air bags. But to me we're going over a big bumpy course here. We've got all these set up in a row. Out on the road, you're going to hit the occasional pothole. It's one little minor dip of uncomfort is definitely worth it to me and my opinion on how much safer I feel, especially in those evasive maneuvers.Now, there are other suspension enhancement systems out there such as Timbrens which also replaced your jounce bumper. They're just a larger hard rubber that is somewhat similar to your jounce bumper but has better properties as it's designed to squish and act with your suspension system to work with it. What's nice about the Timbrens is that there's no maintenance. You never have to worry about air, checking them, because with your airbags here, they do fluctuate slightly with temperature, as temperature goes down, pressure is going to go down slightly. As it goes up, it'll go up slightly. You don't have to worry about any of that with Timbrens. They're never going to leak. But what I will say is they do have quite a bit rougher ride in comparison with airbags. And your airbags can be stiff if you air them up to a high PSI levels, but you often don't need to go above 40 pounds for most loads and at your lower levels, it's going to be much smoother of a ride than a Timbrens system.So you can look at it this way, with the Timbrens, they're going to be working regardless if you have a load in the vehicle or not. If you have a load though, the Timbrens are going to be compressing to help support the load. If you have no load, then the Timbrens aren't going to compress as much. So any impacts that you hit on the road are going to travel through those into the cab of the vehicle and you're going to feel it more.Whereas with our airbags here, since we can't adjust it, we only get the increased stiffness on our airbags when we've got it loaded down real high with a lot of air in our bags. We all load our truck, remove the air bag down to the minimum of five PSI and it feels like a factory truck again.And this is what our airbags look like when they're installed. They replace your factory jounce bumpers and install between your rear axle and your frame. The airbags are adjustable between five and 100 PSI and offer up to a 5,000 pound load carrying capacity. Each one can be aired up individually, left and right, so you can also adjust for offset loads.It's a double convoluted design, but you can see here we've got the lower and upper chambers there where our air goes. And this helps increase the burst pressure of the bag by increasing it's durability. You also see roll plates on the top and bottom and this will help offset for body roll and support the airbag to further increase the durability of the airbag.One of the nice things about airbags is that they have constant contact between your frame and your axle, unlike your factory jounce bumper, which hangs down, but it has a gap between the axle. So with your factory John's bumper, you get no support until your suspension is bottomed out. Where our airbag here is going to get support throughout its entire length of travel. It's also going to be adjustable. It seems like your vehicle's soft, you can stiffen it up a little bit to help keep it from bouncing too much. And if you overinflated it, you can always get a little bit of air pressure out to help soften the writeup too if you've made it too stiff.You'll inflate your airbags using the manual inflation valves in the back. You'll have one for the left and one for the right. If you desire, you can purchase a tee here @eachtrailer.com and route these lines together to a single fitting so you can air on bolt up simultaneously. This is more convenient and a lot faster faring up your airbags, but you do lose the side to side leveling support.And that completes our look at of Air-Lift LoadLifter 5,000 air helper Springs.
Customer Satisfaction Score:
97% were satisfied with this product
3% of customers were not satisfied
Ratings & Reviews
2024 F350 SRW everything fits perfect. 1 year in and very satisfied. I put a leveling kit on my truck and use the bags to prevent the ass end sagging when hauling.
I just have the schrader valve bolted to a hole on the hitch. I keep a little 12v tire inflator in the tool box of my dump trailer. Pump the bags up to 30-35psi good to go.
This is the second Airlift spring set I've installed - both on Ford F150 trucks. Have been very pleased with the product and it's operation. The biggest installation challenge was the mounting nut that held one of the jounces broke lose from its inside frame mounting. Was able to place a replacement nut via a small opening in the frame to mount the upper bracket.
Always quality fast shipping and great prices from Etrailer! You call and can actually speak with a human being on the phone!
Helper Springs are a great assist for the Ford SuperDuty when pulling my 42’ 5th wheel by bringing the truck to normal ride level while driving.
The only issue I have is keeping the slow leak on one side aired up. The leak is at the connector line on top of the bag where the line goes in. I’ve removed, trimmed and reinserted multiple times to ensure it’s secure to no avail.
Airlift 5000 arrived on time and was not complicated to install, working good for me. Pulling a fifth wheel camper and it helped to tighten up my suspension and make it handle better.
Thank etrailer for your help !
These are good air bags. Took a couple hours to put them on. Everything is pretty straightforward with good directions. Had these on my previous truck and they did a good job.
Installation was not difficult. Excellent for the intended purpose of leveling the vehicle with a bumper pull RV trailer connected. Has made the ride for the rear seat passengers uncomfortable when not towing. Have not found a PSI that alleviates this.
The airbags did their job! I’ve got a 2021 Toyota Tacoma, and I’m really happy with the results so far. I only had to put in about 10 psi, and that was more than enough to handle the weight of the dump trailer. The install was a bit tedious and took around 3 hours total. The left side definitely took longer than the right.
The installation was not that difficult. I did not use the wire harness bracket supplied, my 2024 F250 I unplugged the harness form the truck sided bracket all the lines run up to and rerouted the harness much cleaner installation
Installed yesterday and tried them out with the fifth wheel loaded. Leveled my truck out in seconds with a compressor. The installation video on the same page as the product was extremely easy to follow. Also, Joy was awesome with helping me select what I needed over the phone. Very happy with this.
I installed the airbags on my 2015 Ford Transit to help with the heavier weight after converting it to an RV. The airbags were fairly easy to install. All the parts were included with the kit. I chose to use the manual inflation option by running the air tubes to the back of the van and mounted the fill valves under the bumper. There is a noticeable difference in the sway of the van going around corners and the sag in the back of the van when fully loaded. It's easy with a bicycle tire pump to adjust the firmness of the airbags. A great addition to the safety of the van.
Put these on my 2022 Ford F250 to assist with pulling my 5th wheel. Watched the etrailer YouTube video along with the instructions installation went smoothly.
I can’t believe how much putting these rear springs on my 2021 Jayco Alante Class A has helped the whole suspension and ride.
We took the RV all the way to Alaska through AB, BC, and Yukon Canada. I started with low pressure at 60 psi to see how it performed but ended up having the air set at 80 psi. I would definitely recommend these to anyone with a Ford F-53 suspension who struggles with the ride and comfort.
I just completed the install of this Airlifter 5000 series air bag kit. First, the kit, without a doubt, is a high quality kit with many of it's components designed specifically for specific vehicle application. I installed it under the rear of our new-to-us 2021 Ram 1500 Crew Cab Laramie 4x4 Ecodiesel. I was very pleasantly surprised by the nice and robust powder coating of the metal mounting plates. That means protection for them for a long, long time. The hardware/fastners were/are of decent quality also. And, while the "springs" used for the temporary carriage bolt retention in part of the install are a good idea, I have maybe a better way of doing that. In my opinion, for whatever that's worth, here's a suggestion.
Since there are TWO of those carriage bolts that have to be installed AT ONE TIME, you now have to deal with those two long tailed springs, carriage bolts that continue to fall backwards into the abyss of the frame, all the while trying to maneuver the frame mount plate into position. Then, trying to retain tension on the tails of those springs that retain the carriage bolts, and align the bolt tips to enter the mount plate, and then, if and or when you get the mount plate into position and both bolt tips are protruding through it, you now have to hold ALL of that in place, while you remove at least one spring so that you can now grab a nut (a feat unto itself) and fit it onto the tip of one bolt, all the while trying to hold tension on that bolt so it won't fall backwards into the frame and start threading it.
Then, once it's threads are started, you can no concentrate on the same operation for the second bolt. What a serious pain in the petute!
But instead of the springs and tails to be used to retain the bolts while prepping to install the mount plate, you use whatever their called, a very, very thin retainer clip or washer or "push clip" (I really don't know the name of them) that are used to retain the drums onto hubs on an axle, ALL THOSE PROBLEMS would be over.
You'd simply use the springs as before to load and pull the bolts through their respective holes as before. Now, with the one bolt in place, reach through the center hole in the frame that's between the two bolt holes and using a finger, push on the head of that installed bolt. Your finger will now hold the bolt in place. Now, with that bolt held in place, you can remove the spring. Then, PUSH the very thing spring clip right over the threads of the bolt and it will "ratchet" down the threads until it bottoms out against the frame. You have now LOCKED that bolt in place and you can let got of it with your finger and that bolt isn't going anywhere!!!!!!!!
Now, do the same for the second bolt. Now, both bolts are held firm in place WITHOUT the long and cumbersome tails of the springs. You can now grab the mount plate and push it up into place and over both exposed sets of threads at the same time WITHOUT FEAR of pushing the bolts back into the frame. You can now hold that mount plate in place while you grab one nut at a time and thread it all the way on. Then do the same for the other nut.
To me, this would be waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay easier than the method you (and I, and any installer, be it a shop or a home install) are presently using. If I had a link to what kind of clip I'm talking about, I'd link it.
But, those clips are seriously thin yet are quite capable of retaining those bolts and will not hinder the mate-up of the mount plate to the frame sides. Sure seems worth a looking into to me. Just a suggestion.
Scott
These were a great addition to my truck. I moved from Washington to Michigan 1 year ago. Heavily loaded trailer and truck. No sag, no issues. Full disclosure I had to get some custom U bolts made because of my setup, but I have had zero issues. Great buy.
I plumbed my airlines through the license plate which turned out to be very handy.
I didn’t do the install myself. However my mechanic talked me into these after adding a rack and rooftop tent to my ‘14 Tacoma. Absolutely Fantastic. I have a 3” suspension lift and the truck handles as near to stock as I can remember. Awesome product. Easy install (according to mechanic). Thanks all. Oh yes, one issue because I added a leaf spring when I lifted it. He had to find new shackles to allow for fit. FYI
Install on a 2026 F350 SRW. Love the product and have zero issues with that itself. The reason for the 4 star is the clearance with the factory sway bar and brake lines. It does mention that in the instructions, however it's extremely tight and I'll definitely be checked for rubbing in the future to make sure I don't have clearance issues. Otherwise, they work great paired with the Airlift WirelessAIR compressory system, zero complaints on the usability of the product.
Took my time and followed included instructions exactly. Went together well! Haven’t towed with them yet, but definitely raised the back of my Tacoma with 26 lbs of air pressure that I tested for leaks with! Feel like they’ll be a big improvement when towing our 4200 lbs. camper!
Very easy step by step instructions, how to install.It took me about two hours in my driveway. I got it because I haul a 35' travel trailer. Makes the ride a whole lot smoother
a very good choice. The F150 did not have enough stock suspension for my 24 foot trailer with a GVER 10,000lb. Now we all know the truck will pull that weight but when you hooked up it squatted.After installing the air lift it does not squat any more and the truck with a 5.0 has enough power to pull the weight. I had Monroe air shocks on it before but they would not do the job. I am very happy with the setup. I replaced the Monroe air shocks with Rancho shock's and the ride is amazing with or with out the trailer. This was a great investment for the long haul.
Watched the install video twice before the shipment got here and had no problems installing it. Also installed the WirelessOne from Airlift at the same time. Picked up some 1/4" clamps to make the air lines look a little cleaner, and hold them in place during our snowy and icy winters. Including the WirelessOne system, it took about 8 hours from the time I washed the underside of the truck until I rolled it back out from the garage. Pulled the camper this morning and all my old issues have disappeared. Truck is level, trailer pulls great, and the cooling system is back to working as needed. Highly recommend this suspension kit!
Im very impressed with these airbags. So far they are doing the job.
These come with all hardware and instructions. I put 20 psi with no load to see how long the air would hold up. 2 weeks later im now at 15 psi which I'm satisfied.
The previous bags of another brand didnt hold air well even with no leaks.
I can tell the difference in ride quality. I've loaded the bed with landscaping materials and towed my boat with 15 psi and still holding strong. Looking forward to towing my Travel Trailer.
Customer service has also been great!
Instructions say to remove bolts holding snubber and bracket. Then drill lower holes out to 1/2”. Only problem is my snubber brackets are held on with large rivets, which need to be drilled out. A whole new level of difficulty.
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Condition: Surface Scratches
Notes: Item has minor cosmetic scratches. Otherwise in like new condition.
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