Thread: Firestone air bellow-are they holding up to rigours of touring

MLD,
have a look at post 190 here.
http://www.aulro.com/afvb/projects-t...ersion-18.html

Andrew has full air on all four corners.

He had a trailing arm fail on the Cape. This lead to the tail shaft breaking, the other trailing arm breaking, damaging the shocks, but both air springs are OK.

That and the fact that there are trucks that must do millions of Ks on dirt and they seem fine.

I know of one D2 that had a stick go though an air bag, but I have never heard of a Firestone one failing.

Tony

My ones have been transferred across a couple of defenders now, probably have 150 - 200 thousand km's on them by now, no signs of wear and tear.

I've just done a run across the Holland track where they got a bit of a hammering, lots of sandy mud, cross axle situations etc, no issues to note.

One big mistake I have just made is replacing the rear shocks with Koni Heavy Tracks, (standard ride height). They are about 1" shorter than the stock shocks and regularly run out of extension travel, (even on car park speed humps). The air bags have a huge amount of extension, (total of 11" of travel I think?). So I am now on the hunt for a longer shock, that is longer and much more tune-able than the Koni Heavy Track.

Cheers,

Tim

Thanks Tony and Tim, both stories are comforting. I read end to end all the build threads by those I mentioned and noting most were fitted around 2010 or 2012 they ought to have had some miles on the bags.

Tim, I hope to steal your mounting plate CAD. With the benefit of 200,000 kms, would you change the mounts in any way. I would need the longer travel bellows to suit my 11.5" shocks.

The front mounts will be a challenge for me. I will try to engineer a shock mount that allows a bellow similar to the W02-358-9901 to fit in the front.

Cheers MLD

Hi MLD, I have thought of making the mounts shorter, but a nagging thought in my hazy memory makes me think of clearance issues of the bag to the chassis. I may in the future see if I can come up with some new fangled angled mount to keep the bag away from the chassis. Also a higher pressure would be required to get back to a normal ride height, so the ride may be harsher....

My main problem is with the shocks being too short. It's pretty hard to find someone willing to provide solutions that aren't off the shelf, and get past the stigma of "well its a LR, don't they all ride like crap" attitude of people that have never even set foot in one. But in saying that, time and persistence usually prevails

Cheers,

Tim

I wouldn't think twice about air bag durability,the first ones did split near the mounting but they have had lots of redesigns to now they are as good as coils,I took my factory ones out and had a good look at 170K on my RR and couldn't find anything that worried me. Pat

I'm also using TimNZ's design. I modified the top plate to have the mounting hole out about another 10-15mm from the chassis, on advice from Rimmer who had fitted his before mine. He was worried about the bag being very close to the chassis and rubbing.

Also, MacFamily welded a nut on the bottom plate to give me extra thread for the bag to screw into, as I had concerns the 6mm plate was a little thin for thread (probably just paranoid, but it was easy enough to do).

Very happy with my bags, although I haven't really tested them on any hard-core tracks, and only minor beach work. Makes it very convenient loading/unloading my Trayon camper, levelling it out for sleeping, and adjusting ride quality/height when carrying empty or fully laden. I'm a fan - just considering adding a tank and in-cab controls now...

Also, when touring the Vehicle Components factory (they use these bags a lot), I enquired about durability. They said they once tried to cut one open with a knife, and almost gave up!

I came across a fella at cape Melville 3or 4 years back. Overloaded GU ute with rear Firestone bellows. Had blown out one on track in and just blown his spare bellow. Both had let go where the bag rolls on the piston. We extended the small tear to make it big enough to squeeze in small off cuts of those square foam mats people put out for dust control. Got enough in to make a squishy but flat bellow. Re installed and he drove out at walking pace while our crew towed his trailer.

Spooked me a little but I guess he was just unlucky

Coils and leafs both fail if overloaded. Pat