Whew!
With a bit of work on the day after Christmas, my father, brother and I
were able to install the Firestone "Ride-Rite" air system onto the rear
suspension of my Dakota. I took pictures of the whole process and will be
making an HTML page for Jon to use here on the list. I used 3 kits obtained
from our very own Patrick (shetland@erols.com) to make the final product. The
end result is a fast inflating set of air-bags that can lift the frame almost
10" from the axle when the Dak is at rest and unloaded. Supposedly the bags
will support 5000lbs, but the Dak would give out long before then and my tires
would only handle 3900lbs at best. Max psi is 100 for "road travel" but can
bounce much higher as the weight and road conditions vary. In the
configuration I have it, it's very quick and I'm going to add on some more
features later. I may even add on the "automatic" part of the kit that levels
the truck whenever you start it.
In any case, it is kind of neat the way it works. It wasn't perfect going
on, but we got it to work just fine. Firstone made a couple of mistakes in
the parts they included but we worked around them.
Shaun H.
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