Video Transcript for Hands-On with the SumoSprings Rebel Custom Helper Springs

Hi there, heavy haulers. Today, we're going to be taking a look at SumoSprings' line of Rebel Custom Helper Springs for the rear axle. You'll want to use our fit guide to help determine the appropriate spring for your vehicle. The weight capacity of the springs are going to vary between 2,600 and 5,000 pounds, and there may be more than one set for your particular vehicle with different weight ratings, so you could choose a softer or a more aggressive, more supportive one, if you want.SumoSprings are designed similarly to a jounce bumper, which goes between your frame and your axle, except our SumoSpring here is significantly larger. This is a two piece design, so that way we have maximum travel when extending our suspension. With a jounce bumper, you only get compression support once your suspension is completely bottomed out.

It's just that last little bit that the jounce bumper comes in to prevent any contact between the two components.With our SumoSpring here, it's going to compress throughout the suspension travel as it goes down, and it will receive a maximum load level support at 50% compression. The load leveling capacity that this SumoSpring has, it doesn't increase the maximum carrying capacity of your vehicle. This is just how much it can help assist supporting because as the back of your vehicle is down and the front of the vehicle lifts up, the geometry of your tires change, and that's going to change how much contact the tire has on the road, the amount of surface area, and it does help change how much the weight transfers to the front of the vehicle as well.If you're heavy in the back, it's not going to transfer as properly as it would before, and most of the braking is done with your front brakes. So if the weight can properly transfer onto those, you can get a shorter stopping distance as well. So what this really means is that when you load down this spring, it's going to help smooth out your ride.

It's also going to help level out your ride because your suspension is not going to be sagging down as much in the back because our spring is going to be help assisting, helping us stay at that normal ride height, which is going to help restore loss of breaking, and handling performance.And another benefit of having your vehicle's ride height level back out is that your headlights are going to be pointed back down towards the road instead of up at the sky, so that'll help improve your visibility at night, and here you can see what our SumoSprings are going to look like when they're now under load. They have contacted one another and compression has begun. They're barely compressed right now because we don't have a crazy load on it right now, but the more we would load it up, the more it would compress, and this is going to work with your suspension system. So it's helping to not only keep your vehicle's ride height where it should be, but it's also going to help extend the life of your suspension components because they're not going to be working as hard, because they have the assistance of the SumoSpring.And since our springs work independently with one another, they can help offset uneven loads because you're going to have the support from each one on its own side, and it can also help reduce sway because as you start to sway and the spring wants to compress, it's going to want to push it back up, and then it's going to try to go this way, but this spring also wants to stay at its normal position. So when it starts to compress it again, it's going to push it back up and that can help minimize the back and forth oscillations you get when going down the road.

This is particularly useful when you have an evasive maneuver, or a heavy crosswind, or maybe a semi blows right by you, and they start to joscillate, it's going to help be a little more stable for you.Unlike airbags, these are going to be completely maintenance free because they're constructed of a microcellular urethane that's protected against UV rays and road grime. So you don't have to worry about oils and all that stuff on the road, breaking them down, and since there's no air or anything on them, it's just done based on the compression. Once they're installed, they do their thing, and that's it.Airbags are a great option for suspension enhancement. The issue with airbags though, is that you do have to constantly maintain them. When you're unloaded, you want to make sure you've got them down, usually around five pounds, to ensure a good ride quality, but then when you load it up, you'll want to increase that air pressure to help support your load.

Now, if you don't have a compressor on site, when you load it up, you'll have to predict how much air pressure you're going to need before you reach your destination and load it up, and as the temperatures change outside, the pressures in your airbags can change as well. Especially here in the Midwest, when we've got days that can easily change 20 degrees plus or minus, your airbag pressure can drastically change on you as well.That being said, with the SumoSprings here, you just get what you get. There's no further adjustments that you can make for the weight that you're going to be hauling, but if you want to save some time on the installation and have something that is going to be on your truck every time you need it, without having to worry about it, SumoSprings is going to be the better option for you.Before we begin our installation, we're going to go ahead and simulate a heavy load. We've got a water tank here with about 2000 pounds of water weight on it. We've got it on our trailer, hooked up to the back of our vehicle, so we know we've got the back loaded down plenty good. We're going to hit our test course, see how the vehicle rides, then we'll install the components and we'll retest and verify that we've made some substantial improvements.All right, we're heading in to the test course, but before we even get there, I can already feel the backend is down and the front end of our vehicle's pointed up. So our headlights are pointed up, and we know that we're not driving the way it would normally sit. We're going to now hit our uneven bumps section first. This is going to rock us back and forth, and it's going to mimic things like hitting a pothole, and the vehicle's fairly stable, but we definitely feel the bumps when we're going over them.Next, we're going to be going into the even bump section, and this is going to simulate a speed bump, and here we're going to have our forward and backed motion, and I expect once we get some suspension in the back, it's definitely going to help out with how much bouncing we have there in the back, should also help even us out as far as leveling out our ride.Lastly, we're going to be heading over to our slalom section, and this is going to simulate performing an evasive maneuver, and I expect this one here should be pretty drastic differences, once we've got our suspension enhancements installed, and you do feel a little bit of sway here. We can kind of really see it in our trailer in the back. Once we get some suspension enhancements on here, I definitely expect that to be minimized.We're now hooked back to our trailer again, all loaded up. We've got our SumoSprings installed, and I can already tell that our truck doesn't seem to be dipping down in the back as much as it was before. We're going to enter the test course and see how it feels.It does feel a little bit stiffer of a ride when we we're unloaded, but now that we've hooked the trailer up to it, it seems two heads helped smooth that out. So if you're somebody that constantly has their vehicle loaded up, then I would definitely recommend these. If you're rarely loaded up, then you may want to consider another option because it does seem to stiffen it up a little bit when we're unloaded.We're going into our even bump section now, and boy, does it really make a difference here on how much we bounce up and down. It feels a lot more stable. We hit our pothole section before that and it wasn't too noticeable difference. It did seem like it helps stable us out a little bit, and lastly, we're going to do our slalom section now, and our SumoSprings work together with one another. So as one compresses, it wants to push back. So that helps to also minimize sway that we would get. When we get to our slalom section here, that's one of the biggest issues that you get when turning with evasive maneuvers is that you start to get that body roll and it starts to sway.Oh man, and it made a huge difference in the sway. It almost completely eliminated it. It definitely feels a lot more stable when we're just kind of whipping it nice and fast. You don't really feel the weight kind of throwing us around as much as we used to, it just feels like we've got a lot more control, that the body's not tipping over as we're doing that, and that's pretty crazy considering that we're hauling water back there. So when you start to whip it, that water all wants to slosh to one side. So that usually makes sway even worse due to what we're hauling.In summary, Rebel Custom Helper Springs are a great option if you're a frequent heavy holler, and want to get the most out of your truck, and that completes our look at SumoSprings line of Rebel Custom Helper Springs.