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When you hitch a trailer or fill the bed full of gear, the Air Lift LoadLifter 5000 Ultimate air springs keep your truck level and steady. With up to 5,000 lbs of load-leveling capacity, they reduce rear-end sag so steering, braking, and headlight aim stay consistent. The air bags share the load across all four wheels, cutting strain on your factory suspension and helping you tow or haul with confidence.
Each air bag includes an internal urethane jounce spring that cushions bumps and helps prevent bottoming out. These jounces engage progressively—the more weight you carry, the stiffer they become—so the ride stays comfortable even when loaded down. They also act as a backup support if air pressure drops, letting you temporarily carry a load until you can adjust or repair the system.
Every load is different, and this system lets you fine-tune for it. Add or release air through the included manual inflation valves to set pressure anywhere from 5 psi to 100 psi. Inflate both sides equally for straight-line stability or adjust individually to correct side-to-side lean when one side carries more weight. It’s easy control over ride quality and stance no matter what you’re hauling.
The LoadLifter 5000 Ultimate system is made for long-term reliability. Each 2-ply, fabric-reinforced rubber air spring is protected by Air Lift’s exclusive roll plates that guard against damage from moving parts and add extra load capacity. High-strength Zytel nylon endcaps are lighter, stronger, and more corrosion resistant than steel, so they hold air without rusting out. The urethane jounce springs need no maintenance and handle extreme temperatures without giving up performance.
Installation is simple with the supplied brackets, hardware, air lines, and manual inflation valves. Mount the springs, route your lines, inflate them through easy-access valves—then hit the road. If you want in-cab control later on, an Air Lift compressor system (sold separately) can be added for automatic pressure adjustment right from the driver’s seat. It’s a clean setup built for DIYers who want dependable suspension support that works as hard as they do.
Alternate Instructions
Videos are provided as a guide only. Refer to manufacturer installation instructions and specs for complete information.
Instructor Today we're gonna be taking a look at Air Lifts line of LoadLifter 5,000 Ultimate Air Helper Springs with internal jounce bumpers. These bags are specifically designed for three quarter and one ton trucks and motor homes, you're big heavy dogs here. These bags are a custom fit for your particular truck so you want to use our fit guide to ensure you get the appropriate hardware and brackets to install them. To show off our airbags, we're going to add about a thousand pounds of water weight to the back of our truck. We're working with a Chevy Silverado 3,500 today, but the principles are the same regardless of your vehicle. Having your vehicle loaded down like this, bringing the back down and the front up, changes the geometry of your suspension, and it also changes the way weight is loaded onto your front brakes.
So this causes poor handling, as well as poor braking performance. By adding air bags into the back of our vehicle, we can raise the back of our vehicle back up, and that's also gonna help restore the suspension closer to that factory ride height as well. That's gonna give us better contact on the road with our tires so they don't wear excessively fast, it's gonna increase our handling because we're going to have better contact to the road, and with it level back up here at the front again, our weight's gonna properly transition onto the front brakes restoring a lot of that loss breaking performance. Another added benefit is by bringing the back of our vehicle back up, we're picking our headlights that we're pointed up towards the sky and bringing them back down on the road, so we we're able to see better at night as well. And here we can see our airbags installed.
They're going to sit between the axle and the frame of your vehicle, and they'll provide up to 5,000 pounds of leveling support. Now this doesn't increase the amount of weight that you can carry with your vehicle, that's just how much these can help to support and lift your vehicle back up to restore that lost ride height that you had from being weighed down. Inside of our airbag here, there's a jounce bumper, and what that does for us is in the event that we've got it so loaded up and we hit a really big bump, and our axle moves up. If it we're to go up so far, it could contact the internal jounce bumper and that's going to prevent any metal on metal contact, And it's also going to save our bag from any potential damage. This is mostly for when you get really heavily loaded, really pushing it, getting close to the maximum load limit of your vehicle, that jounce bumper can really come in handy when you're maybe doing some good speeds and you hit a pretty big pothole or something like that, that could save you and your vehicle from any issues.
To further increase the structural integrity of our bag, there's roll plates on the top and bottom, so as our vehicle goes to sway to the left or to the right, when we're making invasive maneuvers or just regular turns, the bag as it wants to lean to one side of the other, from that sway can contact on the roll plate here, and that'll provide it with additional support to ensure that our bags stay in place doing their job. The double convoluted design will help increase the structural integrity of our bag. It gives it a higher burst pressure by displacing the air as necessary as it moves up and down. And to further ensure the durability of our gags, they're constructed of a two ply fabric reinforced rubber, and they're very durable here. They have a increased size on that internal jounce bumper as well.
The urethane bumper is a little bit taller so it'll contact a little bit sooner, and that's really nice if you maybe haven't adjusted your air pressure quite yet, either. Maybe you've loaded it up and it's still a little bit lower pressure, that jounce bumper is always gonna be in there to provide contact, and then if you find that, hey, you're hitting that jounce bumper, it's a little stiff, you can up the air pressure a little bit to help bring that away and get the best ride quality, as well as the best support. You also receive a heat shield in your kit, this is gonna further protect your bag from any excessively hot sources, such as your exhaust here. You'll receive clamps with it and everything, so that makes it nice and easy to get that installed, and it's very easy to position it and however you need to for your particular exhaust system. So it's nice, even if you upgrade your exhaust system, you'll still be able to use something like this. Included with your kit, you're gonna receive airlines and all the hardware you need to get it installed. You'll receive two air fittings so that way you can inflate each bag independently from one another. This is nice if you're trying to correct any uneven loads, but really in most cases, when you're loading down your truck, you typically want to load both of your bags the same to just bring that support back up and level your truck back out, and in those instances, the easiest way to do it will be to install a compressor on your vehicle. On this vehicle, we've installed Air Lift's WirelessONE compressor, and this is one of the easiest compressors to install. It's completely wireless and you can operate it with your phone, so you don't have to worry about losing any kind of device when you're trying to inflate it. And you don't even have to get out of your truck to inflate it. So you could pull up to a place and have somebody drop a pallet in the back of your truck, adjust the pressure on your phone and take off. The operating range of our bags is between five and a hundred PSI. Five pounds is when we're just normal driving around, completely unloaded. It is important to have five pounds in there because as your suspension moves up and down, it can create a small vacuum in there if you don't have any pressure, so we just keep that five pounds in there. And then for your heaviest loads, we can go up to all the way to a hundred pounds to provide that support. Just wanna keep in mind that up at those higher pressures it does get pretty stiff, and in most cases, about 40 to 50 pounds is gonna probably be sufficient. And that completes our look at Air Lift's line of their LoadLifter 5,000 Ultimate Air Helper Springs with internal jounce bumpers..
Customer Satisfaction Score:
92% were satisfied with this product
8% of customers were not satisfied
Ratings & Reviews
I'm really happy with my purchase and am glad I purchased it here. Customer care was knowledgable, helpful, quick and friendly. Shipping was super fast. I couldn't be happier!
Some quick feedback that we have had the Air Lift LoadLifter 5000 Ultimate Air Helper Springs with Internal Jounce Bumpers - Rear Axle kit installed on our 2024 Ford F250 Super Duty pick up a few weeks ago. Everything went well with the install by Valley Truck & Trailer in Castro Valley, CA. The team there did a great job at a fair and agreed upon price up front. Final cost was exactly as quoted. Not able to test out the air helper springs under load until we hitched up our fifth wheel. Over the past week we hooked up for a quick trip and WOW what a difference! We are very happy with the ease and speed to "pump up" to desired 60 psi with only a hand "bicycle" pump. The picture attached shows a before and after shot of our rig with and without the air helper springs installed. The difference is night and day. Most importantly I feel much safer and more stable and in control on the road with the truck being level vs. having front end higher than back end. I tried to add a review online at etrailer.com but the fields were locked and I was not able to add any pictures.
I don't usually go so far out of my way to review a product but in this case it is fully warranted. Thanks so much.
These airbags definitely give me a much better ride due to Toyota using coil springs in the rear. I would have given them 5 starts but one of the airbags inset thread was damaged and I was lucky enough to have the right tap. It wasn't noticed till I had my truck on the lift and the first bag installed. If i wasn't able to do that I would have had to uninstall the first bag and wait for a replacement. I understand these things happen but check your parts thoroughly before installing. I would purchase these bags again if needed.
This product was fairly easy to install. The biggest problem I faced was a suspension bracket on my passenger side next to wear I installed that airbag. It was not mentioned in the video instructions. I really struggled getting my tools and hands on such a tight spot. After an hour, everything was ready to roll.
Installed on a 2024 GMC Sierra Crew SLT with rear poly mono springs. This worked great and the install was easy. It took me about 2.5 hours on a 4 post lift, but you could do it in the driveway if you needed to. I reached out to airlift to make sure it would work on a vehicle with mono-springs and they were not 100 percent sure if it would. So I took a chance and it worked flawlessly!
2021 Ram 2500 install was easy, it took a while to run the airlines. I pull a 5th wheel camper 700 miles each trip, the air bags eliminated the side by side roll and keeps the bed level. So far I am very satisfied with the results. When I am not pulling a trailer I lower the air bags to 10lbs for a better ride.
I explained the size/weight of the load I carry in my duallie. A 5000lb slide in camper and a 28' twin engine jet boat. These bags are probably great for their respective load, but I was convinced by the sales team at etrailer that these would be sufficient. They aren't. I can put 100lbs of air (the max) in and truck still sags. Should have gone with the 7500 lb bags.
works very well. i installed them on a 2012 Ford F-150 towing a Grand Design 2600 RB. the airbags substantially helped cut down the bouncing when going over big bumps, bridge decks, etc. also helps with the side winds. very happy with set up.
etrailer delivered these in four days which was a pleasant surprise. The Load Lifter 5000 were easy to install and all of the parts fit perfectly. The installation instructions were spot on as well. I tried to save a little time by leaving the wheels mounted, that turned out to be a mistake, so I removed the wheels mounted on the second side and saved about 45 minutes. The loadlifters perform exactly how I want. They took all of the sway out of my tundra while hauling my truck camper.
Deliver was awesome, installation was a little more complicated than expected but had installed big wig sway bar and torklift lower wedges added some unexpected fitment modifications but I can say has delivered results I wanted.
The truck rides much better now, though I haven’t yet towed with the air bags yet. The bags took out that annoying side to side movement.
Just great!
Easy to install.
The AirLift 5000 work great. The installation brackets didn't work for my Toyota RV & I had to fabricate the ones that'd mount to the frame. Otherwise, awesome improvement to the stability & ride.
Great instructions and easy installation! Fit perfectly! Loaded my tractor to test them out and they completely leveled my sagging truck with 42psi.
Good system seems to made very well. I also got the Airlift Compressor as well Would have done 5 stars but the quick mount doesn't fit a 2025 F250 frame. About an inch to small. DIRECTIONS are terrible, pictures are blurry. Had to you tube the install. for that much money a couple of more pages explaining better with clear pictures.
Works amazing. The install was a little more difficult than it appears… It actually took me and a couple other guys five hours to get it completely installed.
There was a lot of cutting/grinding metal to make pieces fit properly, and had to drop the axel completely… I think that’s only for my gen 2 raptor.
At the end of the day, though I’m very happy with the result
Just had them installed, I’ll be hauling a 9800lb travel trailer soon. That will be the real test!
Added 40lbs of air, they sit the rear of truck up nicely.
I was easy to install just a few hours. Everything in the kit fit well. It would be nice if an extension brackets were provided for the brake line/abs wire mounting bars would be included like the brake line adapters that’s provided in the kit is my only recommendation to make it top notch.
Goes together easy
Perfect fit and easy to install.
So simple to adjust my truck height for towing my trailer
Product is good quality, easy installation, very helpful install videos. Would highly recommend.
Ride’s rough with no trailer hooked up
I ordered this airbag kit for my '99 Chevy Silverado k1500 after I bought a tongue heavy toy hauler (within my vehicle and hitch maximums.) The installation was straightforward, and was completed in a leisurely afternoon. The only part I feel was missing was a T for the airlines, as it makes more sense to have a single valve versus two from both an installation and operation standpoint.
I do not tow enough to need a compressor, and have been plenty happy with my operation thus far. I have been running 55 psi towing, and it has changed the entire dynamic for the better. Of course this does not change my maximum tongue weight or towing capacity; but it does level my truck and keeps the steering geometry where it should be. Towing without the bags was a jittery and stressful experience. With the bags, the truck feels and drives with much more confidence, enough that I can drive with one hand on the freeway.
I read a ton of information regarding the mixing of bags and load leveling hitches, and in my research, as long as the hitch is still generating 3+ inches of drop to load the bars, you will retain all of the benefits of the hitch action. I am accomplishing that drop at 55psi with my setup. I air up, hitch, and end up completely level once everything is loaded. As always, don't overload your vehicle, and drive defensively.
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Brooke M.
11/30/2022
Since these are airbags, you can control the level to which these are filled. That means that if you have a lighter load and do not need as much support, you can lower the psi in the airbags which will make them more pliable and therefore make for a smoother ride.