Thread: defender 110 ute

love this truck mate....be good to see some more pics and footage.....have you got a members ride link?

What a great truck !! - Keep the photos coming mate

Well it has been a while but I finally got to take the red rover for a spin yesterday to test out the air bags WOW why didnt I do this earlier no more cluncking banging from the rear springs no more bouncing after i hit a bump in the road and no more breaking spring retainers. I used to have heavy duty springs in the rear and you had to wear a kidney belt just to drive it it was painfull. After driving around on very rough roads yesterday I would highly recommend the air bags. Their is almost no rebound and the rear is handling alot better around corners you could not wipe the smile off my face as I cant explain how comfortable the ride was. I will post up some detail shortly on part No.s etc.

Great looking rig Hally,, good vids too,,

just makes me want a defer even more,, $$

Good Truck, watching with interest, have a talk to Outlaw about doin a club rego instead of full rego, a bit cheaper and you dont need engineered slips for modifications as far as i know, he will put you on the right track.

well thanks to bush65 for all his research I got board and impatient so I went down to the airbag man and bought some rear air bags 1T14C-8 bellows but they would not swap the pistons and if i want to change them to the 9778/NAD-18053 units it will cost $70 .

so I will just run with the other type for now. The install took 1hr for the first bag and 30mins for the otherside. I'm using 14" travel shocks and seems to be ok so far

here is a link to bushys thread it has a lot of great info
Outer Limits 4x4 Board :: View topic - anyone running airbags in their rover?

Price$ 1050 for two air bags complete with pistons and brackets that need to be mounted inside the upper spring mount and a couple of fittings nuts and bolts etc. at the moment I am just running them with no control as I am slowly building air tank mounts and converting my air con compressor into endless air

these air bags came with a fitting that bolted onto the chassis its basically like a tyre valve so you can pump them up and down at home or at the service station and is alot more legal from what i hear you are not allowed to be able to adjust the airbags from inside the car. I am toying around with a removable controller so i can plug it in when im 4WD and take it out for the trip home.

I am abit snowed under at work at the moment but i will try to add pictures and more detail over the next couple of weeks.

one more thing at the moment I am only running 20psi thats with no load with a steel tray timber floor the height works out to be the same as a 2.5'' lift 15'' from bottom coil mount to top coil mount, these bags have large warnings on them not to exceed 100psi so I still have a 80psi to go, dont think i'll ever come close 100psi

Hally,
I just had a closer look at the pic of your air spring. That shape piston is far from ideal for our use.

See how it has a large diameter at the top and a smaller waist. The effective diameter/area of these 'rolling lobe' style of air springs is determined by the diameter of the piston. And the force that the air spring lifts is air pressure time effective area.

So as the axle articulates or the body rolls the lift force from the air spring which extends is determined by the diameter of the piston where the bladder is rolling. So your extended air spring is pushing up with greater force than it would if the piston diameter didn't increase above the waist (actually would be better if it got smaller in diameter toward the top).

This affects the handling in that the body roll doesn't come back to level as soon as you would like when exiting corners or when the drooped wheel rises from a hole, because the extended air spring is pushing up with greater force.

By comparison a coil spring doesn't have any lift force when it is fully extended.

You will notice that the piston diameter flares out at the base. This is good because the spring rate increases as the spring is compressed and the bladder rolls onto the flared section.

I'll have a look in the Firestone manual and see if I can find a part number for a better piston.

Edit: after submitting this post I saw that Hally posted this information while I was typing.

Thanks Bush65 after driving around the road on the weekend and mucking around on some tracks you are 100% correct i do notice the bags take a bit to settle down after extending but airbagman wants $70 bucks each for the piston and apparently its a real pain in the arse to change them over I will do some research in what it entails but in the mean time im quite happy to drive around as they are

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