I lifted my truck with the 3..5 inch Doetsch spindles a a 3 inch block in the rear. I want to put a coil spacer in the front and lift the back a little more with either air bags or an AAL but Don't know which. I rarely tow or haul things mainly looking for the lift. Which would you guys prefer? I mainly only have my 4 wheeler on the back on the weekends

 

AAL, you would have to inflate your bags to get desired lift and your ride will probably suffer more from that, not to mention they cost more.

 

I was thinkin AAL too but wanted to get some more opinions

 

I put on AALs and have no regrets at all

 

AIR BAGS!!!

The Firestone Ride Rites I use have a 100 psi max which lifts the rear of my F150 about 4" and provides up to 5,000 lbs of carrying capacity. With the 2.5 AS installed, 7-10 psi is enough to bring the rear up that inch or so I wanted and there is NO CHANGE in ride whatsoever. Another nice thing about the bags is if I load up the bed or have a heavier trailer, I just add/remove air until the truck sits exactly where I want it. The other day, 2,000 lbs of beach sand in the bed took 70 psi to keep the rear of the truck at it's unloaded height. I will never own another truck lifted or stock, without installing air bags as the ability to adjust the rear for varying loads is too cool!

AAL's are always at the same height, always applying the same pressure and in my experience stiffened up the unloaded ride too much. The only benefit the AAL has over the air bags is cost. For our trucks, the AS AAL is about $120 and the air bags are aout $350.

 

Got my air bags for 200 from autoanything.com. mine are air lift brand, but they have the firestone for 250. I just manually inflate them, which isn't too bad. Routed the lines into the cab. I keep 5 psi in them when not hauling and up to 100 when needed. Have pics of how much it raises the rear with different amounts of air in the bags on my profile. See album, 2 inch level with rear bags.

 

I know a guy with an F150 and he blew out an airbag while driving and almost wrecked. I do not know the brand but what happened is his tire kicked up a piece of metal and punctured a bag. He said it scared the Pizz outta him, but he decided to put on bags again as he really liked the convenience of them

 

Go AAL. Air bags just seem too risky. Just a little hole, and you're pretty screwed

 

Thanks for providing the input. One thing I took into consideration on cost is if I were to do airbags I would like to hook a permanent air source up to them. The reason I say this is there are times I end up towing/hualing things and I did not plan on it when leaving the house. Therefore I would need to keep air around for that case, would be nice just to press a button in the cab (say its pouring rain).

However knowing you can get lift and ride stays the same maybe I would consider the extra money for what they bring to the table.

 

were those helper bags like what were talking about or a truck with air bag suspension?


i'll be going bags when i do level mine mainly for towing. as much as i liked my AAL on my 07 i think bags will be a ton better for ride comfort and then you have adjustability.

 

I have the Air Lift bags in my truck and think they are great. Just adjust the pressure depending on the load, truck will sit the same and rides great. I can't see myself having a truck without the air bags installed.

Tim

 

That would be nice to have the on board ride adjust system, but if I remember correctly it was about the same cost as the air bag system itself. My on board air system is a cheap air compressor and I routed the lines into the cab instead of out by the license plate as some do. Works great and takes maybe five minutes to fill them.

 

Helper bags. He added them to get a little lift after installing a leveling spacer in the front

 

Since I'm primarily only looking for the height and not too worried about the towing I'll probably go with the AAL. But thanks for all of your info on the air bags

 

Im in the same boat... not sure which one I want to use. I will be towing a travel trailer so the AAL's would benefit then but would provide a rougher ride when unloaded. I just am not sure how the air bags ride when aired up for empty rear-end lift.
I will be installing either the Rancho QuickLift or the Bistein 5100's as well so I want the truck to have a overall 2" lift not leveled.