#bilstein – The Northwest Adventure Truck

August 21, 2018

Air Bag Front Coil Replacement

In a quest for better ride, I have decided to ditch the front coils and go with a Kelderman air bag front end. This kit replaces the coil springs with an air bag, this gives infinite adjustment for load/weight and a supposed better ride.

The first hurdle is how to get the entire front end of the truck off the ground on a gravel driveway….. I have 6200lbs on my front axle, not a crazy amount, but enough to drive the wheels of my jack through a piece of 3/4″ plywood…. Trying again with no wood works, but now the jackstand has sunk. Eventually with some grading of my gravel driveway, two jacks and some jackstands and the front end is ready for work.

Next up, lower one of the jacks so the spring bits can be removed. Springs and the lower coil buckets are taken off. I hit a surface little rust with some zinc rust paint.

The upper bracket needs three holes drilled to hold it in place. The steel is thick and hard. Not a fun upside down drilling project, but take your time and its ok. If your doing this be very careful, there is a large wiring harness right above the upper area your drilling on both sides. Don’t hit it when you break through!

The brackets simply bolt in place of the coil, and the airbag is bolted between them. One long bolt holds the air bag to the lower mount seen looking awkward above.

All together with the air lines ran. I simply ran them up next to the battery on either side. Its just manual fill for now. I ended up around 80psi. You simply inflate the bags until they are 7.5-8.5″ tall. I went with 8″ which ends up about 1.5″ tall overall than stock.

At 80psi/8″ tall with the weight of the truck on it.

Front end of the truck is defiantly a little taller, the jury is still out on ride quality…. I need to play with pressures a bit. Overall no worse than before and 1.5″ taller.

January 22, 2018

New front shocks!

Time to replace the front shocks to match the rear. Over big whoops in the road the front end would bounce a little so they are getting tired. I went with Bilstien 5100’s just like the rear end.

Getting them out wasn’t too bad, getting the new ones in was harder…. Trying to collapse them enough to fit and hold them with zip ties.

No its not rusty, its red grit that Oregon DOT spreads everywhere in the winter. it works well and is very grippy, but man it makes a red mess.

Not enough miles on it to report how they work yet, but I will update it after a few thousand miles.

May 25, 2017

Suspension Updates

After a few trips of driving the truck, it was obvious the rear shocks were not doing what they were supposed to. It bounced after every whoop and bump in the road, even just on pavement. To the point of launching things off horizontal surfaces. The truck does have 107k on it now, and the shocks do look original.

So a new set was ordered. I settled on Bilstein 5100 series shocks. They are a good quality monotube, that don’t cost a fortune.

I crawled under, wiggled my way into a sitting position and got to work. Luckily the old ones came right out (one upside of having an oil leak I guess, not much rust). They collapsed completely by hand and didn’t rebound at all. Definitely garbage at this point.

The new ones went in fine, they were much harder to get in place, as what do you know they had a gas charge and wanted to extend themselves with much force! But with a little help from my wife and a floor jack both sides were in place.

Driving is MUCH better, so much so I want to do the fronts too, as you can feel them bounce a little now that the rear end is controlled. A good upgrade, especially to old worn out shocks.