Air ride reviews

[SCOTI]

While some guys will diss the bolt-on parts from manufacturers like Ride Tech, they're the way to go if you don't have the tools, space, or skills to build your own.

I knew a guy that was an out of state contractor/welder @ my work.... He wanted to do a 4-bar & bags for his extended cab 88-98 truck. He knew about the work I was doing to my dually so he asked for suggestions. I recommended the Ride Tech bolt-on 4-bar suspension based on the easy bolt-on configuration & engineered quality of the parts. He decided to pay a local shop close to 5k to do the work. All the parts they used were fabbed from various suppliers off the net or steelyard angle & plate. It was definitely a 'one-off' custom set-up. The name of the shop was called 'the Hack Shack' & the work looked exactly like the shops name implied. Less than 1-month of driving around he sheared brackets off twice. Each time it required a flat-bed tow back to the shop for repair @ his expense (the shop did the repairs @ no charge). Several months later it happened again but that failure caused him to lose control of the truck & he curbed it. The cause? A poorly routed 1/2" airline chaffed a hole where they had plumbed it against metal but didn't use grommets or a sheathe for protection. Now the truck was damaged @ the front from the loss of control as well as the damage from dropping @ speed w/no travel limiter.

In the end, he wound up selling the damaged truck for less than the money he spent paying that shop for the custom air ride set-up. If he would have spent the same amount of money for a engineered Ride Tech set-up he wouldn't have broken brackets & the resulting expenses.

Can it be done for cheaper than a bolt-on kit? Sure. But what would the quality be? Not all shops (or fabricators) are created equal.

When you say 'budget air ride', what is your budget?
How low are you really trying to go?