Video Transcript for All About the Firestone Coil-Rite Air Helper Springs

Hi there hard workers! Today we're going to be taking a look at Firestone's line of Coil-Rite Air Helper Springs for the front axle. You want to make sure you use our fit guide, so you get the correct airbags for your vehicle. Along with your airbags, you're going to get everything you need to get them installed. This includes your airline, your manual inflation valves, and zip ties, so you can properly route all those lines. You'll also receive any grommets or bushings that are required for your particular set in your truck. On our Ram here, we had one that went in the bottom that supports the bottom of our airbag.Air Helper Springs on your front axle is going to help support front loads.

These are typically things such as a snowplow, maybe you've got a front hitch or other accessories. Our customer's got a very large aftermarket bumper on here with a winch, and he likes to do a lot of off-roading. He's big into caving. So he has to do off-road some time to get to his caves. He's got his winch there to help pull them out.

And he's got a real big fifth wheel that he also halls.So in addition to the front airbags here, we also put a set of rear airbags on to help with this fifth wheel and in the front here to help with smooth out his ride when he's off-roading, and when he's helping pull people out with his winch. These bags are designed to go inside of your coil spring to help provide that additional support. They operate between five and 35 PSI and can support loads between 500 and a 1000 pounds per set. Now this does vary slightly depending upon your truck and vehicle. You want to make sure you never exceed the hauling capacities of your particular vehicle.I've got our airbags currently set at the lowest of five PSI.

We're going to hit the test course and see how they feel while our trucks unloaded to see if it makes it really stiff. Five pounds shouldn't make too much of a difference. We're going to go into our uneven bumps section first. This is going to mimic like hitting a pothole. Our back and our side to side movement is what we're going to be feeling here and it's very smooth.

Right now, it doesn't feel like we've stiffened up the front. It kind of just feels like it does from factory right now. It doesn't really make too much of a difference. And that's what we want when we've got them all the way aired down because that's what we're really not using them. We don't want it to adversely affect our truck.Next we're going to be going over the even bump section, which is going to simulate a speed bump or going in and out of your driveway and that's our forward and backward. And when our front hits the bump here, we go over the bump. It's nice and smooth. We don't have too many oscillations. It's not harsh when we come down. So everything seems fine there.We're now going to go into our slalom section, and this is where we're going to mimic an invasive maneuver. So with the five pounds in our bags, I kind of expect it to be pretty much just like a stock truck. It's probably not going to make too much difference, but often when you add airbags, it does help out with sway a little bit. You don't get as much body roll. So we're going to go ahead and get into it now and everything feels good. This truck didn't have a lot of sway to begin with. It already had a pretty stiff suspension. So everything seems nice. Doesn't seem to have changed whole lot there. We're going to go ahead and head back to the beginning of our test course now. We're going to air the bags up to max and we're going to see how they feel different.All right, we're back at the beginning of our test course. Now we've got 35 pounds in the front bags, and we're going to hit that uneven bump section first. And you can definitely feel that they're stiffer, but it's really not as stiff as I had imagined it to be. I really thought it was going to make this thing slam into these as it hits them. It does feel stiffer. It is a little more abrupt. The truck kind of is a little more jarring when it hits, but it's not nearly as bad as I had expected it to be. And our even bump section is still quite smooth going over them. There's less oscillations up and down when we come down off the bump. When we hit the bump, it is slightly harder, but it's really not too bad.And now we're going to head up to our slalom section and see if it's stiffened up the front any to make it a little bit less body roll. And you definitely can tell that it's stiffer there in the front. There is pretty much no body roll whatsoever with it now. It is a little bit too stiff for my liking. So unless I'm actually using it to do some work and get some stuff done, I wouldn't have the bags aired up this high, but they don't feel as terrible as I thought it would. So if you need to have them aired up while you're just heading to someplace, maybe you don't have a compressor system on it, so you've got to air them up before you get there. You're not going to have too terribly of a rough ride on the way there.One of the cool things about these airbags as well is that they can be adjusted independently from one another. So if you do have some uneven loads, such as something extremely heavy, that's just up on the left front or maybe the right front, you can air up that bag slightly higher to compensate for that. You'll receive manual inflation valves with your kit. So you can air them up independently from one another. Now I don't have them installed on this particular truck because our customer didn't want to have to get out his compressor and air them up. Instead, we installed a compressor system on the truck, so that way he can do it with a remote inside the vehicle.We've got a bunch of different compressors here at etrailer.com and I highly recommend Air Lift's Wireless Air System if you're planning on doing a front and rear setup. It's a dual pass system, so you can set up the front independently from the rear, so you can adjust those sets from one another, which is nice because typically you need more pressure in the back than you do the front, especially if you're going to be hauling a fifth wheel. And I also like that compressor because it's extremely easy to install.Airbags can also help restore some lost handling and braking performance that you might have from a heavily loaded front end because this as the front is weighed down, that's going to affect your braking because the weight is not going to be transferring the way it normally would. So you can help restore some loss breaking performance by leveling your vehicle back out and returning to the proper ride height. It also affects your handling because as the front's lower down, it changes the geometry of your tires. So you're not going to have quite the same surface area on the road that you did before. This can lead to excessive tire wear, as well as that reduced handling. Lifting it back up helps restore that geometry. So you get good tire wear and you have the best handling possible when you're hauling your load.Lastly, this is something you probably don't think about too much, but when you're front's loaded down and you're driving at night, your headlights are going to be pointed down towards the road. So you're not going to be able to see nearly as far in front of you as you would before. Using your airbags to help lift the front end back up to where it was is going to give you better illumination at night, so you can get home safely.And that completes our look at Firestone's line of Coil-Rite Air Helper Springs for the front axle.