Well, it was finally nice out today and got myself off my *** and got some work done! The AirLift bags I had in the rear coils gave up the ghost sometime over the winter and I was sick of having to use them for a lift so I went to my local metal supermarket and got some spacers made up! 6" bar stock and then to the machine shop to get them drilled out.
(My hand is under there somewhere.)
So here's the Before
You can see how much sag there is. Wasn't planning on going for that trophy truck look, but, if the shoe fits!
Beginning of the fun process.
You can see how well the rubber held up over the winter, just lovely.
So springs are out, now to get the bags out. I can attest that they are extremely tough and durable, what failed was not these beasts. I had to get them out of the coil by prying them up with a screwdriver space by space.
Spacers installed!
Compress the new springs to re install.
-Now, I didn't take pictures of the whole process because it was pretty dangerous and not something I want to be responsible for others doing. Needless to say that my coil compression tools weren't enough to make them as small as they needed to be in one go. It was a very precarious slightly frightening!
Tadaa!
Repeat for other side!
The condition of the AirLift bags after one year.
After! (Not the best pic, but you can kind of see the difference.)
For anyone considering the AirLift system, I can say that make sure you have routed the lines in a place that they definitely will not be pinched. On the left side the hose ended up getting pinched between the rubber spacer and the bag. On the right side the hose pulled right off the bag. After one winter the metal spring clips that hold the tubing onto the bags rusted and fell apart. If I put them back in one day I will use some sort of pinch clamp. The rubber degrading like that is pretty sad though. I'm wondering if the airbags let go so the rubber just bounced around but you can clearly see where the bolts made a deep impression and certainly didn't help things.
Now that it's finally sitting almost as it should, my headlights will point in the right direction! I wish I had've got my spacers a little bigger though, oh well, next time!
Also, my horn stopped working. After checking the fuse and seeing that it was fine I decided to have a look at the horns themselves.
This one is in better shape than the other, which doesn't have any wiring connected to it at all anymore. Excuse to upgrade I think!!