Rear air bags

Yay, it's like Christmas morning.

The airbags are here from airbagit.com. 

This is with the airbags squished.  The c-notch is barely off of the axle tube.

This is with the air pumped up.   Now the fronts...

Ok so it is quite a bit lower than I anticipated.  I am cool with that...

C Notch

OK so we decided to C-Notch the frame, just for better clearance.

It's a little hard to see here, but here is the C-notch.

So here it is with the C-notch sitting on the axle tubes.  The axle will be sitting on the airbags, we just didn't want metal on metal.  So it won't be quite as low as shown here, but almost.

Here is the problem.  The pumpkin will probably bump into the bed with the frame this low, and we really didn't want to build a bump in the bed for clearance.  Also the drive shaft line is getting really close to the cross members.

That brought the rear end down, the frame is just about level to the ground now with front and rear on the stops.  Next we need to beef up the C-notch area because cutting it out weakened it quite a bit.  And even though we no longer have the leaf spring perches in the rear part of the frame that require the strength, we are planning on putting on a trailer hitch, so we need it to be strong in the rear section of the frame. 

Panhard Bar

So the Panhard bar is the suspension piece that keeps the rear suspension centered left and right.  This picture shows the right frame rail and the panhard bar mount.

Here is a shot from underneath.  Unfortunately as you can see here, the Panhard bar is just about horizontal with the suspension fully collapsed.  So we are going to build the frame end mount a little lower so that it is slightly 'downhill' when collapsed, then horizontal at ride height and then slightly 'uphill' on her tippie toes.  We were originally going to put the axle end on the rear face of the axle tube, but this would mean that the spherical rod end would be moving the wrong way.  So we rotated it toward the bottom, making the frame end now too short.  Oh well, live and learn.

Here it is from the top.  You can see that the panhard bar angles back slightly, it seems to be okay though.

Here is the axle tube mount.  We are going to finish weld it all later, just before sandblast and paint.  As a final note, I called the guys over at Airbagit.com and they are the best!!  I finally blew the dust off of my visa card and bought the airbags that I need.  We are going straight bags on all four corners, so we will have to fabricate a shock mount for the front suspension.  Joe and Tom, thanks you guys, you're the best!

Let's see how she'll sit...

To C-notch or not to C-notch, that is the question.  Hamlet had it wrong...so here is the pumpkin and it is less than an inch below the frame rail height.  So if we do C-notch it, it will only be an inch or so.  We'll C, um, see...

So we put the body back on, it is nice to have a dozen teenage boys to lift this thing, it is heavy!  And we actually have a ton of room in the rear wheel wells.  I don't want to mess with the bottom of the bed, it will still be a truck after all, so we can't go so low that the pumpkin sticks out into the bed.  But it looks cool even this level.

The trouble is, we still have the monster huge springs in the front.  The Astro vans were heavy!!  Even with the engine and trans in place, and a couple of big boys on the frame, we were barely moving the front suspension at all.  So the question is, should we just get the airbag shocks, or just airbags, and remount the shocks?  The problem is the shocks have a limited amount of travel, and so the serious airbagger dudes don't like them as well.  We'll take the springs out and see what it looks like resting on the down stops.

Here it is in Wheelie mode.  Just photoshop out the jack...

OK, shocks and springs are out of the equation, sitting on the down stops, and it looks mean!!  The front crossmember is a little too low for the jack to slide under.  I think this is about right!  If the airbag shocks will allow this much travel then we are good to go with them.  What do you think?  

And here it is from the back. The wheels won't steer too far this low in the front, but that is the price that we pay for looking good.  My buddy Bob says that you just don't steer them very much with the bags dumped.  Yeah!  I might find some rims with more negative offset...I don't mean to sound greedy, but I would like to see the rear lower, maybe I can do it with tire diameter.