did you say you adjusted the bracket for the ride height? did you physically move it down or up? down would raise the truck and up would lower it. Ford Racing (frpp) has a 1-2 inch lowering kit in the catalog. i dont know if it would soften your ride or stiffen it up. Air-ride Technologies offers a air bag front suspension for the f-150. maybe even take off your front sway bar to see if that helps? since your going for less handling and more float.

i didn't mean the rear mono leaf wont support the weight of the truck but its engineered to work with the airbags.

 

I would think that lowering it would make the ride even harsher. Jim, where are you located? Surely SOMEONE has a B/W within driving distance of you!!

Wait a minute,, WTH am I thinking?? We are talking Blackwoods here!!

On a side note

It is great to see a Blackwood thread with more than 3 posts on it

 

I'm about 10 minutes south of Cincinnati on I-75. I've seen just 2 Blackwoods besides mine. The first was coming out of a local car wash back when they were new, and the second was last year driving this one back from Florida when we passed another one on the interstate. That was kinda neat.

I moved the air ride adjuster up as far as it would go and that lowered the back of the truck a little but it's still a little higher than the front. With it disconnected and shoved up so that it let all the air out of the bags it sat real level. Rode just a little better that way but I figured it'd be bad for the air bags.

I agree Mercman, I don't think lowering is going to make it ride any softer, but I do appreciate the tip. I had thought about the swaybar and the front airbags are probably a real good idea, depending on cost of course. But the biggest trouble seems to be with the back. When the axle goes over sharp bumps or dips the whole truck sort of jiggles. Kinda like when you bump a bowl of jello. If I could just get rid of that it'd be a big improvement.

Jim

 

Want to know what's even weirder? I've got Marauder seats in my MG!

Jim

 

I live just N. of Indy and get to N Ky(Ft. Thomas) about 3 times a yr. Next time I make the trip I will let you know. I will bring the B/W and you can compare the rides.

 

Havn't checked in in a while.An interesting discussion about the differences in ride quality among different owners. As far as the ride on my BW goes, it rides really well. Nice and smooth, not like a truck at all. I have a vacation place in N. Fla. that I go to every few weeks, @ 270 mi. one way. I usually take the "Wood because of the way it rides on the turnpike.I also have a Monte Carlo SS which has a much tighter suspension but I find I have to really"drive" it at speed, versus letting the BW just cruise with one hand on the wheel. 90 MPH (the new 60 I guess) and it just cruises along. The only complaint that I ever had was some wind noise at highway speeds. One thing that I did notice is that it seems to ride "softer" when I bumped the air pressure up a few pounds above the recommended pressure. Seems that it would work opposite, but it didn't.

As far as seeing Blackwoods around, they are all over the place down here. My neighbor has one and there is a guy @ 4 mi. from here that has one. I stopped to pick up some supplies for my business the other day and there was another guy in the shop that had one. Took it in for service last monh and the dealer had one on the lot for sale and another one in for service.....GRRRRRRRR......
Rich

 

Is it just me or is the majority of B/W owners in the South? I have seen a lot of them for sale in Tx and fl. I would think a black vehicle would not be popular in the south and southwest!

 

I think there were three of them at the dealership where Dad bought this one a little over a year ago on the north side of Cincinnati, but I haven't seen them on the street at all since they first came out. At least I know where to go if I need to buy another one in a year or two (for the business). Florida.

The ride is much better with the Monroe shocks, and it's hard to imagine that my truck would have different parts than all the rest. The only thing that really makes any sense would be that my perception of a smooth ride is different. This could be I guess, I began driving in 1970, back when cars had soft suspensions and they've all gotten much stiffer since then, I've been driving that '94 Conti for half a dozen years or more and no doubt it's 'spoiled' me a bit, and I do try to baby my back a bit since it can and has given me trouble when I don't. But even considering all that, I felt the ride was unacceptably harsh.

It wasn't something I noticed right away, but after making a couple of long trips and then driving it daily it became obvious that every bump in the road gets transmitted through to the driver. I don't mind decent road feel, but I don't like a perpetual backache either. Once I started paying attention, (After all, who wants to believe that their new luxury vehicle has a harsh, non-luxo ride?) I realized that everything about it is stiffer than it needs to be. The shocks are stiff, the springs are too, the suspension bushings, judging from road feel are stiff too. The tires are inflated hard using the stock pressures (For mileage?) and even the seats have firm cushions, no doubt to keep them from compressing on long trips. I understand the reasons for each of these things and every reason is a valid one. The problem as I see it is that the engineers lost sight of the end target which should have been a comfortable ride, day in, day out, and on long trips. In my opinion they missed this target by a long ways. Now if I was just parking it in the garage and taking it out on nice Sundays I doubt I would have noticed anything amiss. But it is my daily driver and my back was telling me to pay attention.

So I changed the tire pressures, the ride height, and the shocks and after the second swap had it soft enough that the back pain started to ease up. Which is to say that the ride is acceptable, but not what I would call luxury. Maybe compared to new cars it is, in fact compared to a new Town Car it rides nice. But I can't help wondering what people who really do have back trouble do for a car. Cover it up with pain pills maybe? Not a future I would want but to each his own.

So anyway once business picks up enough to justify it I'm going to put lower rate springs on the truck and perhaps more of a balloon tire. Then if that's not enough I'll have a look at the suspension bushings to see if softer ones can be substituted. The seats I'll probably leave alone, although a hole punch used in the right spots would soften the seat foams nicely so I'll have to at least consider that, and the way they make the upholstery these days it's not hard to remove and reinstall. No hurry there though.

Straps, you said you bumped up the air pressure, was that in the tires or the air suspension? I don't see how that could help, but the jigglyness is a harmonic type thing so it's possible you could have changed the frequency enough to damp it out.

Jim

 

I went up 2 lbs. on the tire pressure looking for better MPG. Helped a little but I also noticed a better ride at speed. Didn't make sense to me either. I didn't realize that you could adjust the air ride. When I first got the truck I thought about lowering it a bit and installing an air ride system but the suspension companies that I contacted (Air Ride Tech.,Hotchkiss, etc.) didn't have anything that would work .Said it was partly because of the hybrid nature of the suspension, part F150, part navigator, part Blackwood, so I left it alone.

As for why they seem to be in the South more, it might have to do with the initial marketing to golfers because of the supposed easy storage for clubs.I think that it was initially released first in Fla. and Calif. I did read somewhere that one reason that it didn't sell was that the bed wouldn't accommodate a large golf bag....wouldn't close. OOPS...

 

Quite a screw-up if you assume they were after the country club crowd. Let's face it, the project was rushed out the door. Considering how it was held up for the beds they'd have done better to have put some more engineering time in on it, but from what I've read it was sort of a hobby project for the product development guys anyway, unveiled in a sort of impromtu get together. Not the proper way to develop a new market entry, but not a bad way to do a concept.

All that considered it turned out pretty good, at least for my segment of the market. Luckily the major shortcomings can be corrected and the rest is really nice. All in all, I'm glad to have it.

Jim

 

Reviving a very dead thread!
Jim, are you still active here?
Still have the Blackwood?
mine was “lowered” by a PO by the cheesy method of removing the air bags AND the bump stops… with NO other supporting mods!
They also added china mart chromed aluminum “lightning wheels” with 275/45R20 rubber bands, so it rides like, well, I was taught to not use that kind of language!
At 170K miles, I’m almost positive it’s on its orig. shocks still, as well.
Do know at least one body bushing is toast… imagine the rest are also.
I might be passin’ through your neck o the woods next week, if you’re still around there.
DJP