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

Video Transcript for Firestone Ride-Rite Air Helper Springs Installation - 2011 Ford F-150

Speaker 1: Today on our 2011 Ford F150, we're going to be installing Firestone's Ride Rite air helper springs, part number F2542. This is what our springs are going to look like when they're installed. There's currently a moderate inflation on it to allow it to carry a decent load. Each spring can be adjusted individually. This way you can maintain a steady stable load from side to side no matter what you're hauling.It'll also help increase stability while under a heavy load. You can adjust it as necessary per your load, so you can help maintain that factory ride height and make it even on both sides.

This is important when it comes with stopping and turning because the weight will be more evenly distributed, allowing it to stop closer to its factory specifications.They feature a maximum carrying weight of 4800 pounds and operate between five and 100 psi. To give you a comparison on how this is going to affect the ride of your vehicle. Currently we're unloaded without the springs installed. Our ride height is measuring about 39 inches. And in the front our ride height is measuring about 37 and a half inches.

We've now loaded up our truck with several hundred pounds. Let's take a look at how that affects our suspension. Our rear is dropped down to 36 inches. That's a three inch drop in the rear. And our front suspension has increased to 37 and 3/4 inches.And now with our air springs installed and the truck loaded back up, let's see where we're at.

And we're right back to our factory ride height with about 45 psi in our air springs. And when we check here in the front, we once again returned back to our factory ride height. So now all that steering and suspension loss that we we're getting from that load in the back should be mostly restored.So as you can see here on our test course with this heavy load in the back. It's tipping the back side down and dragging the front up. So we're looking up towards the sky and if it was night time, this would really affect our headlights making it hard to see what's in front of us.

It's also really rough ride throwing us up and down, back and forth. So a bit of air springs will help even out that suspension. Now we're going to take it in to our test course. So as you can see here, our vehicles going to maintain it's level, which will help bring those headlights back down, so they're not pointing up at the sky from a heavy load in the back. It's also going to help increase that braking performance because it's going to be leveled out, so the weights going to transfer properly as most of your braking done by about 75% in the front. It's going to increase comfort of the ride, we're not going to feel those bumps as much and sway around as that load throws the cab up and down. And overall, it's just going to feel safer.We'll begin our installation off the vehicle, by pre-assembling our airbags. You'll begin by taking your top mount bracket with the flange facing up away from the airbag, slide it over the two studs. You can then install two of the small flange nuts to secure it in place. Then snug those down. You can snug them down using a 15 millimeter socket or a 9/16 socket. Now remove the plastic cap from the top of the airbag and thread on your air hose fitting. You'll then need to tighten it down using a half inch wrench until it contacts the sealant located on the threads. You'll want to orient this so it faces towards where your airlines are going to run.When it's installed on the vehicle, the flange will be facing outwards towards the tire and away from the inside of the vehicle. So we're going to be positioning it in this position. So it'll go towards the rear of the vehicle. We'll now install the lower bracket. This is going to be oriented with the L brackets facing away from this flange. This goes on the bottom, so we'll flip it over and we'll flip our bracket over. And we'll install it using the small copper colored bolt.Now if you had a two wheel drive vehicle, you would be using a spacer with the longer bolts. However, since our vehicle's four wheel drive we'll be using this one. You just want to snug it down. We'll torque it in a later step.Now we'll remove our bump stop on our vehicle over here on the passenger side and we're using a 13 millimeter socket. We'll set this aside but keep the bolt because we'll be using it in a later step.We'll now install our frame bracket onto the vehicle. There is a difference between the left and the right. So you do want to make sure that this L portion faces towards the front of the vehicle. So it'll be like this with this portion towards the front. Before we install our bracket, we'll need to remove the rubber seal from this hole here as we're going to need the access.We can now set our bracket up into place. And using the same bolt that we took out of the jounce bumper, thread it right back into that same hole and go ahead and snug that back down using a 13 millimeter socket.We'll now need to take the plated handle nuts and prepare them to install them into the frame. We'll slide in the frame such as this, but we'll need to angle this arm outward so we can still maneuver it around. So we're going to bend it in this direction. Almost to a 90 degree angle, but not quite. Do that with both of your brackets.Now take your bracket, slide it up into the frame. We're going to angle it towards our front hole first. Then take one of the one inch long 3/8 bolts, thread it through the bracket in the frame and tighten it into the handled plate nut. Kind of got to move it around til you find the hole and get it started.We'll then repeat that same process but this time for the rear hole by sliding that handled nut into the frame. Then using the same sized bolt again you're going to slide it through the back hole this time and line it up with that handled nut.Now torque your frame brackets to the torque spec per your instructions. We're going to be using a 9/16 socket to tighten them down. We can now take our spring assembly and set it into place. It is a tight fit. You can get it inside the bracket. So you may need to use a hammer, pry bar, or whatever means to get it in there.And once you've hammered it up into place, you'll need to align the holes to get your hardware through. Now they do go from the inside out, however, I liked to just get one started on each side to help line these holes up. Because it can be a bit tedious because the bracket sits very tight.Once you've got all your holes lined up, you'll then insert your bolt from the inside going outward and thread a flange nut on the other side. Do this for the remaining three holes. If you did a bolt in from the outside to help you align it, you'll just need to pop that bolt out, flip it around and put the nut on the outside.And now tighten down your hardware using a 9/16 socket and wrench. We can now install our U bolts. Line them up underneath your leaf spring going through the two holes in your lower bracket. Then thread on a flange nut onto each side of the U bolt. Do this same process on the other side of the rear bracket.Now tighten down your bracket, making sure that it's as close as possible to being centered on each side of your factory U bolts. You'll tighten these down with a 9/16 socket.Now go back and torque all of your hardware to the specifications in your instructions. Making sure not to forget the bolt located on the bottom side of your lower bracket. You'll repeat the same process on the other side.Now when installing these on the driver's side you may have to position your brake lines slightly higher and lower. You can just bend those ever so slightly just so you can get your handled nuts in place.We're now ready to install our air hose. I'm going to go ahead and route mine then I'll show you how I routed it. We're here on our driver's side airbag, we went ahead and pressed the airline hose into the fitting. It just presses right in and that locks it into place. It is a good ideal to wiggle it back and forth to make sure that it is secure.We then took the line down over the frame, following any factory wiring that we could securing it to that wiring. Up over our spare tire coming down to our hitch in the rear. This where we'll be mounting our airline fittings. You'll just need to zip tie it to any factory wiring whenever possible to make sure that this air hose stays secure and doesn't rattle around potentially causing an air leak.Now that we've run one side, it is a good idea to give yourself a little bit of excess just in case you need it for any future repairs that you may need to make. And then we'll cut our airline using the airline cutter tool part number F9009. Line the air hose up in the center and just bring it together. This will make a nice clean cut to ensure that it seals properly inside of our quick connect fittings. We'll now route our passenger side airline.We can now install the bracket that's going to mount our air inlet fittings. So we can air up our airbags. Position the bracket where you'd like it. We're going to put it on the hitch here. We're going to use a zip tie to secure it. These large zip ties do come provided in the kit. And we'll use two zip ties to make sure it's not going to go anywhere.Now take your fitting slide a flat washer on it. Push it through the bracket again put another flat washer on it and tighten down the brass nut. Repeat this for your other air hose. And snug them up using a half inch wrench.Now take your airline and simply push it in the back of your fittings. Make sure to give them a good tug in and out to make sure it's fully seated and secure. Do the same with your other airline. You can now air up your airbags per your instructions and check for any leaks.Now using some soapy water go ahead and spray down all your fittings and where your airlines connect to make sure that there's no leaks. The presence of bubbles would indicate a leak. Now that we've verified there's no leaks, we're ready to set to the appropriate pressure for whatever load we're hauling and hit the road. And that completes our installation of Firestone's Ride Rite air helper springs, on our 2011 Ford F150.