Air Lift Ride Control Air Helper Springs Installation - 2006 Chevrolet Colorado

Products Featured in this Video

Air Lift Ride Control Air Helper Springs - Rear Axle

178 reviews

Code: AL59539

Retail: $562.58

Price:  $326.53

• Vehicle Suspension
• Rear Axle Suspension Enhancement
• Air Springs

• Standard Duty
• Air Lift

2,000-lb Capacity. Level your vehicle when you're hauling a heavy load with these Ride Control air springs. The adjustable springs improve overall stability and ride quality, eliminate rear sag, and reduce strain on your factory suspension.

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How to Install Air Lift Ride Control Air Helper Springs on a 2006 Chevrolet Colorado

Today on our 2006 Chevrolet Colorado, we'll install the air lift, ride control air helper strings, Part Number AL59539. Our first step, we'll be assembling the air sleeve, an upper and lower brackets. We'll take the air sleeve, install the upper bracket on top, going over the nipple coming out of the air sleeve. We'll secure the upper brackets to the air sleeve with the plastic nut provided, then we'll take our air fitting, the 90 degree fitting and thread it on top of the air sleeve. We'll go ahead and secure it, and tighten it down with a wrench. Next, we'll go ahead and install the lower bracket.

To secure the lower bracket to the air sleeve, we will use the half inch taper headed bolt. Now, we have the brackets and air sleeve assembled. We'll move to the truck. Here, we'll need to remove the manufacturer's jounce bumper. There are two fasteners securing it to the frame, we'll then remove those now.

Now with the jounce bumper out of the way, we'll go ahead and discard the hardware as we will be infusing the fasteners provided with the install kit. Let's go ahead and set the air sleeve brackets in place, then we'll bring our jounce bumper back in and fit it up into position, securing it with a new bolt provided with the install kit. Now, we've got our bolt started, we'll go ahead and run them down, and then torque the specifications as indicated in the instructions. Next, we'll move to the lower bracket. Here, we'll need to make some room at the lower shock mouth to make the additional room necessary.

We're going to go ahead and remove the bolt and nuts securing the lower half of the shock to the shock mouth. Take the bolt as it's now going from inside to outside and turn it around so that it'll go thread from the outside to the inside. Quick tech tip: If you do you not allow the shock to fully extend, it makes it much easier to get the bolt back into position and re-securing it with the same nut. Now, with the bolt back in and our nut installed, we'll go ahead and tighten them down. Our lower bracket has a hook facing forward, it'll fit over the shackle mouth of the lead spring to axle.

Now to secure the lower bracket into position, we'll go ahead and take the u-bolt fitted over the top of the upper bracket and around the lead spring. Then we'll bring our u-bolt bracket into position and secure it with a flat washer and nile unlock nut, it would be two for each u-bolt. Now, we've got them in position finger tight, we'll go ahead and tighten them down. It's best to tighten them down evenly so that it stretches the u-bolt evenly. Now, that secures the air bag here on the driver's side, we'll go ahead and repeat the same process on the passenger side. Next, we'll move to installing the air line. For this application, we'll be mounting it in the rear bumper on either side of the license plate. I'll go ahead and take a couple of quick measurements and use my paint stick to make a mark so it's equal on each side, then we'll go ahead and use our drill bit to drill it our large enough for our schrader valve in to go through the hole. Now that our hole drilled out, we'll go ahead and find the halfway point of our air line, as each end is already pre-installed with the schrader valves. Once we find the halfway point, we'll go ahead and take our tubing cutter and cut it in half. The reason we use a tubing cutter is so that we don't crimp our lines as we cut it in half. Now, we have our line cut in half and our hole drilled out, we'll go ahead and install the schrader valve in into the bumper. To do this, we'll go ahead and thread on a nut and install the serrated washer. Then we'll bit it into the bumper and install our rubber washer, a flat washer and securing nut, and tighten it down. The runner line will use a pole wire or in this case, a piece of tubing to assist us in pulling it through the frame. Taking my pole wire, feeding it to an excess hole in the frame and out in the end, I can then detach the new air line with some black electrical tape and then pull it through the frame. Remember when running your line, you stay away from moving components such as the steering suspension or excessive heat such as exhaust that can pinch or damage the line. Now, we've come out of the frame pulling the excess line necessary and then route it down to the bag. As you can see, we still have some excess lines, so I'll go ahead and use my tubing cutter to cut off any excess, then installing it into the air bag, we'll simply go into the red nipple of the air fitting, push it firmly into position and then pull out locking it into place. Now, we'll go ahead and repeat the same process on the passenger's side. Now, with both air sleeves and air lines installed, we'll go ahead and air it up and check the leaks. As you can see, we don't have any leaks and this will complete the install of the Air Lift Ride Control Helper Springs Part Number AL59539 on our 2006 Chevrolet Colorado.