Air Lift LoadLifter 7500 XL Air Helper Springs - Rear Axle

Video Transcript for Air Lift LoadLifter 7500 XL Air Helper Springs Installation - 2020 Chevrolet Silverado 3500

Conner: Hey guys, how's it going Connor here today at etrailer.com. We're going to be taking a look at the Air Lift LoadLifter 7500 air helper springs here for our 2020 Chevrolet Silverado 3500. For our air helper springs here, they're going to be an excellent option here for our Silverado. The primary benefit we're going to see is we're going to have reduced sag while we're towing or hauling heavy loads. Now, as you can see here, you have a fifth wheel hitch setup in the back of this customer's truck here, because they're going to be towing their fifth wheel trailer. Hence forth they're going to need the airbags to help reduce the sag from the heavy pin weight.

So as we we're touching on one of the main benefits here of our air bags, is they're going to help us reduce our rear end sag here while we're towing or hauling a heavy load.Some of the problems we're going to have if we wouldn't have airbags installed and we did go ahead and hook up our fifth wheel trailer, or we put a bunch of weight in the truck bed here, as we're going to show you later, is sometimes if the threshold a suspension is reached, we're actually going to be riding on our bump stops here. And what this is going to do is this is going to create a very rough, bouncy, and uncomfortable ride. We're not going to feel we have as good a control as our truck as we would with some suspension enhancements installed such as the air bags.So another thing we need to take into consideration is, when our truck's squatting at the rear is, that means our front end is going to come up as well. Now, most people don't think about this as much as they do the rear end sag, but raising the front of our truck here is actually going to cause quite a few issues. Number one, we're going to have our headlight aim is not going to be correct, which means we're going to be shining other motorists in the eyes when we're driving down the road at night.A couple of other things we can touch on, one of them is a pretty big factor.

It's we're going to have reduced braking. Now, the reason we're not going to have as good a brakes here is that we're not going to have as much weight on the front axle, which is where our primary braking is going to be. It's going to be about a 60:40 ratio from the front to the rear. So you can see why we want to keep as much weight on the front axle as possible.And another smaller thing you might want to consider is, since we do not have as much weight on the front axle here, our camber of our tires aren't going to be correct, so we're going to have some irregular wear patterns here, which is going to cost you money and maintenance down the road.Now to give you guys a better visual at home to what sort of difference we can see with our airbags, we're going to go ahead and take some measurements for you. Now, the first measurements we're going to be taking are the stock unloaded ride height.

Then we're going to take some measurements with some weight in the bed. We're also going to take some measurements with our airbags installed and that same weight in the bed so we can show you the difference. So our stock unloaded ride height here at the rear, we're going to be measuring from the ground to the top bottom edge of our wheel well here, and we're going to get about 41 and a half inches. Now, if we take the same measurement from the front here, from the ground to the top bottom edge of our wheel well, we're going to get about 40 inches. So now we're going to go ahead and put some weight into the truck bed and show you the difference.So now that we have some weight in the bed of our truck, let's go ahead and retake our measurements here to see how much they changed.

So the rear here, if you remember last time we had 41 and a half, you're at about 40 inches now. So we actually dropped about an inch and a half here. So if we come to the front here, if you remember last time, we we're at 40 inches. This time we're at about 40 and a half inches. So we went up about a half inch in the front.So now that we have our airbags installed, we went ahead and put our container here in the truck bed here, let's go ahead and retake our measurements to see how they changed. Now, if you remember at the rear with the factory suspension and load in our truck, we had about 41 and a half inches. Let's see if we can get back there. And it looks like we did get back there even maybe a little bit more. We definitely decreased the pressure in our airbags a little bit, but we did get back to factory ride height, and that's what matters. Now, if we come over to the front and take the same measurement that we've been taking, right at 40 inches. So it looks like the front of the truck dropped back down to the factory ride height as well, which is what we we're hoping for.So now we got the weight in the back of our pickup here. What we're going to do is we have a couple of test courses here at etrailer to show you how the truck is going to handle with the stock suspension and the weight in the bed. This first one here, we have our speed bump course. So we're going to go ahead and take that through here now, get up to speed. So we can feel the truck sort of jolting around a little bit. The steering wheel is not wanting to stay center. You can definitely hear things really starting to move around back there.Now we're going to head over to our slalom course here. We're going to get up to speed and make some evasive maneuvers. And right away, we can definitely feel that weight shifting around back there. It's definitely a rocking our truck a little bit back and forth.Now that we have the airbags installed, we have the weight back in the truck bed, let's go ahead and take our truck back through our test course here. The first course we have is a speed bump course. The truck definitely feels a lot smoother, a lot more stable. We don't have that jolting around as much side to side, and we're not bouncing up and down here as much. The steering wheel, I will say isn't jolting as much either side to side. It's more centered and controlled.Now we're going to go back through our slalom course here. Get up to speed, make some evasive maneuvers. Now again, we definitely feel that truck is a little bit more planted. We're not going, bouncing back and side to side as much, nor do we have as much up and down movement.So to start our installation today, we want to come underneath the vehicle here and do the driver passenger side first. It doesn't really matter. We we want to locate our factory jounce bumpers, which are these orange things here directly above the axle. And we have to take these out. Once we let that lubricant set in, what we're going to do is we can take a screwdriver, which you might more likely to be having at home, or we can have a large pry tool here. What we're going to do is, we're going to try to sneak that in between the spring and the cup. We want to pry it out like so. Just like that. Then we can take it off and repeat this process on the inaudible 00:06:03So we're going to come inside below the jounce spring we just removed. We're going to see a 13 millimeter bolt here, or bolt, rather, than we're going to use a 13 millimeter socket to remove. It's going to be this brake line bracket here, holding it to our jounce bumper plate. Go ahead and remove this, going to have one on each side. Set this full aside, we can just let this thing freely.So after we're to come over here to our workbench. We're going to take our airbags here as well as our roll plate. We want to install the roll plate on the airbag with our 90 degree fitting. In order to do this, we're going to want to first make sure the rolled radius side of our roll plate is facing down towards the bag. So you can see here, we have the larger hole where the inflation port is, and then the two side holes which needs to match up to this bracket here. We'll set those on there like such. We will take our 90 degree air line fitting. We're going to tighten this hand tight so we can't get it hand tight anymore. Then about one and a half turns here with our 9/16ths inch wrench. We may need to hold the bag a little bit, just to make sure it doesn't spin. And one more for good measure. That should be good for now.So now that we have a roll plates inside, we want to go ahead and take our upper brackets here. You'll see they have these curved lips here, and there's going to be more holes in comparison to the lower brackets we have here. So we also want to keep in mind, our upper brackets are going to be labeled L and R for left and right hand side of the vehicle. What we're going to do now, we're just going to go ahead and set these into position. They should really only line up one way. You might need to adjust the roll plates to get the holes to line up a little bit better. Now we're going to take our hex cap screws that come with the fit here. We're going to use a 7/32nds inch hex driver, we're just going to install these into the holes, lining up with the threads in the back.So now that we have our upper bracket installed here, we're going to go ahead and flip over our airbag assembly here. We're going to begin installing our lower bracket. A couple things we need to point out is, you see here we have our inflation valve on this side. We're going to have the angled side of our bracket facing that. So it's going to install about like this. And we also need to make sure we're using the correct holes on our bracket here. We're going to be using the first and third holes, as it shows in the instructions. But before we do that, I'm going to go ahead and make sure we set our roll plate down first.Now, once we have the lower bracket into position here, we have the roll plate installed, and we're making sure we're in our first and third hole here. We can go ahead and re-install, or install our Allen screws here. They may need to be finagled a little bit, with the roll plate here and the bracket, to get to the seat correctly. You don't want to force anything and strip the threads. Do a hand tight, or we can take our Allen key here, just going to snug those up for now till we get them both in place.So now, once we have our bracket installed correctly, I'm going to go ahead and take our torque wrench here. And we're going to torque these Allen screws. Once we get these torqued down, we can go ahead and repeat this process on our other airbag assembly.Now that we have our airbag assemblies put together, we can go ahead and install them up on the vehicle. Now, if we remember, the upper brackets here are going to be stamped with an L and R, L meaning left side, R meaning right side. The left side on this vehicle is going to be the driver's side. So we're going to go ahead and set these into position now, making sure our fittings are on the inside of the frame here.So in order to get this into position, we're actually going to have to kick our lower bag here out more this way. That way we can pull down on our air spring here, because we're going to have a little bit of issues with the gas tank here. Only on the driver's side, though. And then it should pop right into place just like so.So we've already removed these two little wire loom clamps from the bottom of our bracket here. What we want to do is, we're going to take the smaller one here, we're going to put it back to that hole like so. And then we're going to loosely line up the tab here to our air spring bracket. It might come out, but we are just going to set it into position now. And we're going to take our other bracket here, which is included in this kit. Make sure we have the L for the driver's side. We're going to take this little larger loon clamp here. We're going to place it into that tab, just like so.Then once we have our bracket installed here on our larger loom, we're going to go ahead and flip this upward. That's going to sit nicely on the in tab of our lower bracket there. We're going to take one of our 3/8ths inch carriage bolts. I'm just going to place that down there like now, and just follow it up with our serrated lock washer, or lock nut, sorry. And then we're just going to loosely thread this on. So now that we have this bracket secured, again, we don't want to make sure it's real tight, we want to be able to adjust this back and forth. We're going to take our axle clamp bracket here, and we're going to go ahead and set this up to position. However, we're going to have another tab on the bottom of our lower bracket on the other side that we're going to need to insert a carriage bolt through first. Once that's done, we should be able to put our axle clamp bracket up into place. And the same thing like we would for this one, we're going to be using these serrated nuts.So now that we have everything loosely installed, we're going to have some adjustment left to right here. And basically what we're going to do is we want to center this bracket here in between the shock absorber mount and our U bolt clamp. So we have a little bit of room to do that, doesn't need to be perfect, but we do want to get it as centered as possible. Now we're going to go ahead and tighten up the serrated lock nuts. We're going to be doing this with a 9/16ths inch socket. And keep in mind, you want to make sure we alternate back and forth so we get it torqued down properly.And now once we have both of those secure, we can go ahead and tighten up this lock nut up here. And we don't need to torque this one down, just get it nice and snug. Now we can take our brake line bracket here, line that back up and attached to this using the eight millimeter nut and flat washer provided with our kit.So now that we have the bottom of our airbag assembly secure, we need to go ahead and secure the top. Now the first step in this is going to be to take our U bolt here, we're going to slide this over the frame like so, and we're going to come out through these two holes here towards the back of the bracket.However, you're going to notice something right away. It's going to be a problem in our particular truck. This customer has a BMW companion gooseneck hitch installed, and it's going to get in the way from us having the ability to slide this U bolt up over the hitch and into the holes it needs to do. So ideally, if you're installing both one of these in bed hitches, or aftermarket in bed hitch along with these airbags, you're going to want to do the airbags first so you don't run into this issue. If you have the factory puck system, this shouldn't be an issue, but keep in mind, it can be an issue for some of these aftermarket gooseneck and fifth wheel hitches like this BMW companion.However, we still have an option for you. What we're actually going to do is, we're actually going to essentially just raise the bed. So hopefully you aren't in this situation, but if you are, there's actually going to only be four bolts per side that are holding the bed to the frame. And again, we're not going to take them all the way out. We're not taking the bed off. We're just going to pry it up enough to slip our U bolt in. So there's going to be one that's kind of hard to see, which is going to be right here. And the rest of them are just going to be along outside of the frame here, inaudible 00:14:52 they're pretty easy to find. There's going to be three more heading up that way. That'll be it.So now that we have all the bolts removed for our bed, we can go ahead and just prop this up just enough so we can speak the U bolt underneath the bed channel and over the frame. Now we can just go ahead and secure our U bolt with the included nuts. Now the next thing you're going to need to do, we're going to take our circular U bolt here, we're actually going to come around to the backside here above the jounce spring cup, and we're going to try to fit that U bolt over the cup there. It is a pretty tight fit, and then it should come out these two oblong bolt holes on the top of our upper bracket here pretty easily. And then we're just going to loosely install our hex nut fasteners.So now once we have all the upper brackets loosely installed, we're going to want to run our air lines here. So we're going to take our air line, it comes in this one-piece coiled section here. What I'm going to do is I'm just going to find the two ends here and sit them together. And then I'm going to cut this in half as best as I can. So we're just going to be using a straight edge razor. Once we have our section cut, we're going to go ahead and insert one end, the cut end, into the air line fitting on the top of our airbag. To do this, we're just going to simply line up the hole, press it in, and then pull out to lock it in place.Now we have our air line installed in our fitting, we're going to go ahead and route the inflation valve in, towards the rear of the vehicle for it to be accessible for an air truck. Now we want to make sure that we avoid any exhaust or any moving parts, such as our suspension here. So what we're going to do is, and again, there's a couple of different ways to do this. Just whichever way gets it away from everything makes it the safest from punctures, is going to be the best route. So we're just going to come behind that harness there, over the frame, going to pull down here to release some slack. And then we're going to actually go above these computers here and above the spare tire section and try to fish that out to the other side. We're going to come through here. We're just going to let this hang for now.So now that we have our inflation valve here at the rear of the truck, the next part of this is really going to be preferenced where you want your inflation valves to be, so where they're both easy accessible. Now we have a couple of different options here. We do sell a separate no-drill bracket you can use to attach it to the bottom of the trailer hitch, and have them fit like so. Or what a lot of people do is they just drill a couple of holes here in this little black plastic panel here, away from the license plate. So the connectors are going to sit like so, and they're going to be accessible that way. Again, this is just preference, which ever you prefer. We're actually not going to be mounting this for you, because this customer actually opted for a wireless air compressor system, which we do sell separately if you want to go that route as well.But again, the installation is going to end up with mounting our inflation valve, whether we want to go up here or we want to secure it to the hitch receiver too. The next thing would be a good idea to go ahead and use some zip ties to secure the air line you ran, so we can make sure it doesn't drop down over time. Just simply use some zip ties to secure it to the existing harness. Maybe some of the brake lines here. Again, there's not an exact process for that. Just whatever works best for you, you can do to secure the air line. Now, once we have the air line secure, we're going to take our 9/16ths inch socket, and we're going to first start by tightening these upper bracket here to the frame. So again, you just want to alternate back and forth.Now that we have these nuts snugged up, we're going to come back with our torque wrench here, and we're going to torque these bolts. So now that we have our square U bolt torque down, we're going to go ahead and repeat the same process here on the bottom for our circular U bolt.So now we do need to make a quick little note here. On the passenger side of the vehicle, you can see the airbag is it going to be pretty close to our exhaust pipe here. So what they did is in this kit, they've included a nice, easy to use, easy to install heat shield, which is going to wrap around this exhaust pipe here, and it's going to secure with a band clamp. Just like that.So the final step of our installation here, once we have all our air lines ran, we have our inflation valve secure. We're going to want to take a soapy water solution here, and first, we're going to want to inflate both air bags. It doesn't really matter how much air you put in them, we just want to get them filled so they are supporting the rear of the truck a little bit. We're going to take our soapy water solution here, and we're going to spray down all of our fittings so we can check for leaks. So again, both of the fittings up to the top of the bag here in particular, the threaded fitting at the bag, as well as the connection to our air line here.Now what we're going to be looking for is slow forming bubbles. That's going to indicate we have a leak present. If we did have a leak present here at the threads, we're going to have to tighten this a little bit, or take it back off and apply some more thread sealer. However, it doesn't look like that's going to be an issue with this one. And if we did have a leak here between the air line fitting connection and the push to connect, we're going to have to rit a little bit straighter. But it doesn't look like we have any leaks here, so we're good to go.So now that we've went ahead and sprayed down all our fittings online and checked for leaks, that's going to do it today for our installation of the Air Lift LoadLifter 7500 air helper springs here for our 2020 Chevrolet Silverado 3500.