I added air suspension. Well firstly I sold my record collection and having hoped to get £250 – £300 for them, planned to set aside this money and buy an air suspension kit for about £300. That was the only way I could justify the expense to myself. I sold them to a new shop in the Piece Hall in Halifax and was delighted to get £550 for them so immediately ordered a kit from eBay, which looked good.
Next hold up was the weather. I managed to find a couple of warmish days in early February to fit the controls and gauges and run the pipes through the floor near the nearside back wheel. There is a gauge for each side to pump up equally from one button to activate the compressor and a valve to let air out. Because of the way non return valves are used you can let air out unevenly, but it always pumps up equally.
I had to wait until the end of March to get under the van and fit the air bags. I was a little worried that they would not fit as my van had what looked like extra supports for the bump stops which needed removing, but the brackets slipped over nicely. The whole thing was well made and fitted my van perfectly. The only snag was I needed to cut one bracket to accommodate the break pipe. Pumped them up and one side immediately deflated. At first I thought it must be my joints, so a quick test with soapy water showed it wasn’t or at least if it was it was very slight. I couldn’t see any bubbles but could hear air hissing. Fault traced to faulty alligator valves. I contacted the supplier who quickly posted a couple of spares which arrived promptly from Slovenia. Sorted – thanks!
I had a bit of trouble fitting the last part which was designed to disable the break balance adjustment. This is designed for the original flatbed truck and applied more break to the rear breaks when heavily loaded and less when not. The kit supplied brackets designed to give the best breaking for a loaded van no matter what ride height the air suspension offered. Obviously a high ride height would let the breaks think the van was empty and give less breaking.
