Firestone Ride-Rite Air Helper Springs - Double Convoluted - Rear Axle

Video Transcript for Firestone Ride-Rite Air Helper Springs Installation - 2014 Ford F-150

Speaker 1: Today on our 2014 Ford F150, we're going to taking a look at and showing you how to install the Firestone Ride-Rite Air Helper Springs for the rear axle. Part number: F2525. I have my truck pulled up to my camper here. If you've ever hauled a heavy camper or towed a heavy load, a common problem is that the sag we get in the back of our truck. The back end will get pushed down, the front end will raise up, and you kind of get that floating feeling when you're driving down the road because the front tires aren't making that good of contact and we're putting a lot of stress on the rear suspension. Before I full hook up my camper, I'm going to take a few measurements.

At the center point of my thunder well, it's just right at about 37-1/2 inches at the back. Now, at the front, we're right at about 35-1/2 inches. Let's go and hook up our camper and see what those measurements are.With the full weight of the camper on my truck, you can obviously see there's quite a bit of difference back here. We dropped a little over two inches in the back. Let's move up to the front and see what happened up there.

In the front here, it actually raised up about a half an inch, which again, is going to cause those problems where our tires are going to wear out faster. Honestly, we might be going down the road blinding people with our headlights because they're going to be pointing up.Now, airbags are designed to help support that load and bring our track back up to factory height. They're designed to handle up to 4,800 pounds, but keep in mind that they're not going to increase the pay load of our truck and you should never exceed the manufacturer's recommended towing weight. With our bags inflated at 50 PSI, we brought our right height in the back right back to the factory specifications. Up front, we're right at where we should be back to the factory height.

What that's going to do is take out all the unnecessary stress off of our rear suspension, bringing it back up, helping support the weight of our camper. Now, it's also going to make sure that our headlights are aimed in the correct direction rather than pointing up to the sky and making sure that our front tires are firmly in contact with the ground so we don't get that uneven wear or that really loose steering feeling when we're driving down the road.Another benefit to our airbag is it's going to prevent our frame from coming in contact with the axle and bottoming out. It's going to provide a cushion, giving us a lot more of a comfortable ride when we're driving down the road. Here's what our bags are going to look like once we have them installed. Now, they are designed to go in between our leaf spring pack in the frame here.

Our airbags are going to include all the necessary hardware and brackets to get it installed. This is specifically designed for F150's so we're not going to have to do any kind of drilling and all of the brackets are going to be custom made.The operating range for our airbags is going to be between 5 and 100 PSI and they are compatible with compressors so we don't have to get out and manually inflate them, but they are sold separately. The double convoluted design of our airbags means it's going to have minimal lateral expansion, so we're not going to have to worry about it coming in contact with all the other components around it. Our airbags are going to come with dual manual inflation valves, so that way they can work independently from each other for those off center loads.It's also going to come with this no-drill bracket so we don't have to drill into any part of our truck to get them installed. Now that we've seen our airbags and gone over some of the features, let's show you how to get them installed. To begin our installation, you're going to want to lift the back end of your truck by the rear axle and make sure that it's supported with jack stands and that it's not going to move around you. We went ahead and removed our rear tires as well. The easiest way to get in there and remove it is we take a 13 millimeter socket and short extension, and you come straight up into the center of the jounce stop.I'm going to get that in position first and then put my ratchet in there and we can remove it. There's just very limited room in between the jounce stop and the axle so it's easier to get that socket in first. Once we have it removed, you can pull it out and the bolt that was holding our jounce stop in, we can just flip it over, the bolt will come out. We're going to want to hold onto the bolt, but the jounce itself is not going to be getting reinstalled. We can start to assemble our airbag. These little rubber caps, we can go ahead and pull those off and that will expose the studs underneath. The one in the center is going to be a threaded hole.Then we can grab our bracket. We'll line up the studs with the two holes and the larger oval hole will fit to where that threaded section is. We're going to grab the three ace flange nuts. I'm just going to put these on their hand tight for now. Then we can grab the valve. It's going to have some red thread locker or sealer on there. We're going to get this started by hand, but then we want to make sure that we tighten it enough to where that thread locker is going to fully engage and get it as tight as we can, but you don't want to crush it whenever you start tightening it down.With everything started by hand, we'll take a half inch wrench and we'll tighten up our fitting. Whenever we're tightening this, keep in mind that this flat section is going to be going towards the outside so typically, you're going to want to have this pointing toward the back of the truck or wherever you need to depending on where you're going to mount your valves. You just want to make sure that we have easy access to the fitting so we can put our align in later. With the valve tight, I'm going to come back with a 9/16th socket and tighten up the flange nuts on top.If we take our bag, I'm going to go ahead and flip it over. We'll see that we're going to have a threaded hole on the bottom. We're going to want to grab our lower bracket. Now, these are numbered so you want to check your instructions to make sure you get the correct one and that flat piece that's sticking out on the upper bracket, you want to go towards the flat side that doesn't have the ears on the lower bracket. We're going to line it up, but in our situation, we're working with a two-wheel drive truck so we are going to put the spacer in place.We'll line that space up with the hole in the bottom of our airbag. We'll take our lower bracket, loosely line it up. Then we're going to take the long bolt because we're using that spacer, and we're just going to get this threaded in, hand tight, you want to make sure you leave it loose so everything can still kind of move around a little bit. Once we have it all set up, the flat side and that lip should be on the same side, and the ears should be on the back of our bag.With our airbag assembled, we're going to put our frame bracket in place. These are also labeled and numbered, but we're working on the left side so you want to grab the bracket that has the L on it. We're going to take the factory jounce stop bolt and on the bottom of the bracket here, we're going to have a hole, that's going to go into . The bolt's going to go into that and we're going to line it up and use that factory bolt to put it back in place. We'll get it in their hand tight, make sure it will hold the bracket up and it starts threading, and then we can fully tighten that bolt up.You do want to be mindful because there is some lines, and some brake lines, and electrical cables that are on the other side of the frame. Our bracket's going to clear them, you just want to be mindful of everything else that's going on back there. Now, our kit's going to come with some handle nuts or plates. On the other side of our frame, there's going to be a large hole in the center and we're going to feed this in so we can line it up and have our bolts go through. Before we do that, we want to bend the plate so that we can get it in a little bit easier.If we just take the threaded section sticking up and we grab the handle, and put your thumb towards the bottom, we're going to bend this in towards about a 45 degree angle. When we put our plate in, we can still have a handle sticking out, able to maneuver it around. We're just going to take our plate, and again, watch those brake lines and the electrical cables there. We're just going to feed our plate in. I'm actually just going to leave the handle loose right here. I'm going to go to the back towards the outside, that way I can watch to see where that threaded section is and move it back and forth until I can get my bolt lined up.I'm just going to reach over the top of the frame. I'm going to take one of our three ace bolts. Once we have our plate lined up, It's going to take a little bit off patients and a little bit of time to get everything lined up. You may have to bend that handle a little more or bend it back a little bit to get the angle correct as well. Once we have that bolt started, I'm going to go ahead and leave it loose and we'll put the other one is as well. We're going to take our airbag assembly now, and the tabs here that have the two holes are going to fit in between our frame bracket and we're going to be using the lower two holes to mount it up.You're going to want to take your airbag and it's going to straddle around the leaf spring pack. We're just going to compress it down and tilt it in until our ears get at least inside of there. Then we're going to take a three ace bolt and from the inside going out, we're going to bolt through our upper bracket, through the frame bracket. Again, you just kind of want to push down until the holes line up or get them close. We're going to have at least one bolt going through and just to hold it in place, take another one of those three ace flange nuts, and just put it on their hand tight.We're going to do that for all four holes on our upper bracket. Once we have all of this hardware in place, we're going to come back and tighten out those three ace bolts that we're going to those frame handle nuts. Now, you don't want to tighten these too much, and when you go to tighten them, you want to kind of peek on the inside and make sure that handle nut isn't pressing against the brake lines or any electrical lines that may cause any damage. For these bolts, again, I'm going to be using a 9/16th socket. You may want to use a short extension just to give yourself some room so you can get access to it.Now we can tighten up the upper bracket bolts. You're going to want to get a 9/16th wrench to hold the bolt on the inside and a 9/16th socket to tighten up that nut. Now we are going to have a little bit of movement on this lower bracket of where it can be positioned. You just want to try to get that back as straight up and down as you can. Again, just make sure that bracket is straddling the leaf spring pack. Then we grab our bale clamps and there's going to be a hole on either side of that lower bracket going across the leaf spring pack.You're going to want to feed it through the holes, making sure that it lines up, and goes all the way through. We're going to take some more of those three ace flange nuts and we're just going to loosely thread them on. We're going to have a clamp for one on the front as well as on the back. Just towards the front here, you want to keep an eye on that emergency brake cable and anything else that may be in the way. You don't want to crush it with that clamp. We'll get this one in place hand tight and then we can come back and start tightening all the nuts up.Again, I'm going to be using a 9/16th socket. You just kind of want to alternate going back and forth between the two a little bit. We'll tighten one up, move to the other side, and just go back and forth alternating tightening each side. Once we make contact with the clamp to the bottom of the spring, we'll move to the other bale clamp and do the same thing alternating going back and forth. After those are tightened, we're going to come back and we'll tighten up that three ace bolt on the bottom. It's going to be easiest to use a wrench to tighten it up, but if you have an extremely shallow socket, you can use that.We just want to make sure that we get it nice and tight and you don't forget to tighten that nut up. With this side, we're going to go ahead and repeat that on the other side. The only difference is we're not going to have any brake lines to deal with with our frame bracket. We're going to find the halfway point. The easiest way is just put both ends together and run your hand until you get to the end right here. We're going to want to cut our airline tube. You want to make sure you use a tubing cutter so you have a nice clean, straight cut. You don't want to use a pair of diagonal cutters or anything that may kind of chew up the end.That way, it will prevent any kind of leaks or anything else. Now, we're going to take the end of our airline tube and find our fitting. We're going to push the airline tube in pretty firmly into our airline tube until you feel like it kind of bottoms out. It's always a good idea to give it a quick tug and that will lock in place. Now, if for any reason you need to remove it, that small ring that's on the fitting there, if we just kind of push in on it and pull out on the airline at the same time, the airline will come out.For now, we're just going to take our airline, make sure it locks in, and we're going to route this towards the back of the bumper. I'm going to go ahead and route both my airlines and I'll show you how I did it. Both my airbags, I ran along the outside of the frame here until I came to very back by the bumper. Then I went over the frame towards the center. The one coming on the passenger side, I just routed towards the driver side of the vehicle and I left all the excess airlines on both of them, that way if any repairs or any kind of movement needs to happen, we have this extra airline readily available.Now, we just need to hook up our inflation valves and hook them up to our airlines. Now, where we're going to mount our inflation valves, we do have a few options. We can drill into our bumper and mount them directly there or we can use the no-drill bracket in order to install it onto a nice, flat section. We're going to mount ours directly to our hitch here, and they do provide you with a couple nylon ties, and basically what we're going to do is we're going to go through the bracket and we're going to feed it up over the hitch until we can grab it on the other side.Make sure you don't catch any electrical cables or your airline with it. You're just going to wrap it around the hitch, make sure it's sitting where you want it to, and we'll just tighten down that zip tie. I would suggest moving that locking section of the zip tie out of the way so we have room to get our airlines in place. We'll go ahead and put the other zip tie on and we can cut the tails off. We're going to take our inflation valves, go ahead and remove the cap, and we'll remove the nut that's on there. We'll take one of the flat washers that's in our kit, we'll slide it over the valve.We're going to feed our valve through the bracket, put another flat washer in place, and for now we're just going to loosely tighten up that nut. We'll do the same thing for the other inflation valve. I'm going to grab a half inch wrench. I'm just going to hold the back side of the inflation valve. You just want to snug these up. You really don't want to go crazy tight because it is just securing it to plastic and there's not a whole lot of pressure that's going to be put on these. You just want to snug them up and we'll do that for both of them.On the back of the valve, we're going to have the same kind of fitting that we had on top of our airbag. You're going to take the appropriate airline, the one on the left side valve will be from our left side airbag. We're going to push it in just like the airbag and the same thing for the right side. Then we're going to want to put some air in both of our bags and make sure that they're not leaking. We're going to take a spray bottle with some soapy water and I'm going to spray down all my fittings, and the airbags, and anywhere that there's a connection point.Now, we're looking for some bubbles to pop up, but if we don't have any bubbles, that means that there's no leaks in the system. We'll continue spray everything and make sure that's not leaking. With no leaks in our system, all we have left to do is put our wheels and tires back in place. That will finish up your look at the Firestone Ride-Rite Air Helper Springs for the rear axle. Part number: F2525 on our 2014 Ford F150.