Air Lift LoadLifter 5000 Air Helper Springs - Rear Axle

Video Transcript for Air Lift LoadLifter 5000 Air Helper Springs Review

Hey everyone, Ryan here at etrailer. Today we're gonna be checking out the line of Air Lift LoadLifter 5000 air helper springs for the rear axle. So let's check them out and make sure they're gonna work for you. The way an air spring kit works is pretty simple. They're just gonna fill that void between the bottom of your frame rail and the top of your axle, and that's how they're gonna provide that support. They're just going to replace the factory-style jounce bumper, which this is what ours look like.

And what these are for, right from the factory, is just to prevent the suspension from bottoming out. You know, they're not gonna give us any additional support when we have heavy stuff in the bed or we're towing a big trailer, or anything along those lines. And they work really well, you know, really simple design, but very effective. And kinda just to make my point, outta curiosity for myself as well, before we even put these on, you might have noticed this piece of blue tape here on our shock when we we inchesre driving around. What I did was I lined up the bottom of this with the top of our tape.

So that's originally where our suspension was sitting without the air springs in place and squatting way down, right And right now we have about 50 pounds of air in the bags, and that's how high it brought our ride height back to. So this is looking a lot more factory and probably where it should sit to begin with. And so, you know, it's actually an effective design and gets the job done, The air springs are gonna have a load carrying capacity of 5,000 pounds. Keep in mind that's not going to add to the load carrying capacity of your particular vehicle. That's just how much weight these are gonna be able to handle.

And that's usually more than sufficient for just about any scenario, generally speaking. One of the things with airbags is they're adjustable, right So with these, you can go from five PSI all the way up to 100 PSI. Most people find themselves somewhere in the middle, but you've definitely got a lot of room to work with. And that's one of the benefits to an air spring over some of the other types of suspension enhancements, is that adjustability. You know, you can really dial everything in and get it set up to the particular load or trailer that you're carrying around.

So perfect example, our vehicle today has that big dog kennel deal on the bed. 50 pounds seems about right right now, but whenever they go to hook up to the trailer and pull their UTV around, they might need to add a little bit more. So, you know, they can really get it dialed and find that ride that you're looking for. With that in mind though, you know, air springs do require a little bit of maintenance. You always need to keep at least five pounds of air in the bags, even if you're not, you know, towing anything, or have anything in the bed. And that's just the design of the bag. That kind of holds true across the board for all the bags out there, at least from my experience. One of the things that can make that easier though and adjustments for that matter, is by using a compressor kit, alright So compressor always stay with the truck. A lot of them you can set up to have presets to where if you turn your truck on, it'll always go to that minimum pressure, whatever you have it set at. That way you don't even have to think about it. Or if you need to make an air pressure change from hauling a different load, you can do it very easily from the front seat of your truck. One of the kits that I really like, and everyone here for that matter, done a ton of them, a lot of good experience with them, they're also made from Air Lift, they're the EZ Mount, and they're wireless so they already come with the bracket. Everything's built in, really simple. They make it about as easy as possible. And having that wireless remote, you're not gonna have to drill anything into your dash or deal with anything along those lines. Everyone's truck is gonna be a little bit different, right And that's because these are custom fit for particular vehicles. Today we have them installed on a Sierra, but I like to mention be sure to use our fit guide and enter in your truck's information. That way you get the right kit the first time. And kind of a point or two, that seems like kinda across the board, pay attention. If there's a little dropdown menu that says two-wheel drive or four-wheel drive or different types of submodels, things like that, that's something to look out for, because there are some minor changes and some bags won't be compatible with certain submodels, so on and so forth. Today we have a perfect example of a truck that could greatly benefit from a suspension enhancement like an airbag. With this setup, it's sagging really bad. We have a all stainless steel dog kennel that sits on the bed, and the suspension could use some help for sure. Not to mention too, when they sounds like when they go out, run their dogs, go to the farm, things like that, they have a side-by-side that they pull behind as well. So I can only imagine with, you know, several thousand more pounds hooked up to the thing, truck's probably almost bottomed out. So this will be a really good test, even with just the kennel up here, how well these Air Lift bags are actually going to work. So what we'll do is hop in, go through a course, run through the paces, that way we can see how it feels before and after. The very first thing I notice when getting in this truck, is the front of it is raked way up, right You can tell just by sitting in here that we have all this weight in the back. And ideally it's not how we wanna ride, it's not comfortable and it wears our tires out faster among a bunch of other things. So we're gonna hit a few bumps here, and even just hitting that one is pretty bad. Usually we have a whole course of these, but some construction and stuff today, a lot of stuff everywhere, so we can only hit a couple. But honestly I think that's all I need to feel, even going over that one. As soon as I hit it, as soon as that backend goes over it, it almost feels like it's bottoming out and super sloppy. The truck goes all over the place, and I'm only going four mile an hour. So I can imagine hitting a pothole or something like that, how bad it really could be. And I definitely understand why they're wanting some help there, 'cause even going over that bump, I almost heard the suspension kinda exhale. So definitely getting a workout. What I'll do now is probably just some big circles, try to get some evasive maneuvering going. Again, we got all this construction, so our area here that we usually run these tests is pretty well taken up, but what I'm trying to do is get some body roll going, and it's pretty bad, not gonna lie. Just hitting this first turn or two, you really gotta drive into that steering wheel to get it to turn. Feel that the top of the truck wanting to come over on you. It's super sloppy. And again, I'm only going a few miles an hour. So you know, going around those sweeping turns, or you know, hitting bumps, for example, you go over a bridge on the highway, you know you start floating all over the place. So I think we have something to work with here and something to go off of. Now that we have our air helper springs installed, visually right away you can notice a big difference. You know, the back end isn't squatting nearly as what it was and it's more on par with how it should be from the factory with no weight loaded into the bed of the truck, or anything like that. So, so far so good. But you know what really matters is how it's gonna feel when you're driving. So let's see how it goes. Inside of the truck immediately feels better. Just the fact that we're not tilted way back and looking up at the sky. Just hitting that one bump I can already tell, huge improvement. Before when I hit that we were getting, you know, slung all over the place, and that wasn't the case there, so. Liking how it's feeling so far. And we've got a trailer moved, so we got a few more bumps to go over, and significantly better. Huge improvement on this truck. As I'm hitting these bumps, and I'm going the same speed, sure you can still feel a little weight and things like that, but the suspension isn't working nearly as hard. You know, I hit this, you get kinda one float, and we're right back to where we should be and way more manageable. Like I said before, you know, you'd hit this and the truck's all over the place. So definitely a huge improvement there as far as that goes. We will do some turns again and really curious to see how this is gonna do, because from my past experience, kinda across the board, this is where you really see a big difference. I'm gonna get some speed going here, a little more room this afternoon, and way better, way better. Before this truck was just super sloppy, and don't get me wrong, you can feel the weight there, we saw some body roll, still a truck with a bunch of weight in the bed of it, but way more manageable. The steering wheel's a lot lighter in your hands, you know, you're not having to kind of desperately turn to get going where you need to. And kinda what I expected, you know like I said from my experience, we've done a lot of suspension enhancements, this is where they really shine, and I'm glad to see that, because I feel like it's a more real-world type situation way we're practical. You know, when you hit a bump or something, you're not going over a big line of them in everyday life, right So it's nice to get those benefits if you do hit a pothole or go over that bridge or something. But you're always gonna be making turns, right And so it's really good to see that you made an improvement there and get a lot more performance from our truck. It seems like a lot of people end up start looking at suspension enhancements, because they end up putting that fifth wheel hitch or gooseneck hitch on their truck, and that makes sense, right You put the big hitch in there, start pulling your camper or whatever and realize, need a little bit of help. And to address that, you know a lot of people wonder are airbag kits going to work with those in-bed hitches And it's hard to answer that across the board in its entirety, but generally speaking, yes. Air Lift, from my experience, is really good about making their kits compatible with those in-bed hitches. Perfect example today, our air spring is compatible. We have a couple different ways you can mount it to clear an in-bed hitch, and things like that. So if that's your scenario, see our tech notes and tech tips on your particular kit. The chances are really good you'll be able to find that information there. So you might be wondering, you know, is an air spring gonna be the best option for me, because when it comes to suspension enhancements, you know, there's usually quite a few options out there. And just to kind of run through a quick comparison, if you've decided, yeah, I want an air spring, I think that's right, and you get to look in, you know, Firestone makes a good set, good kits as well. Main difference with them, at least from what I've noticed, is how their bags are set up. You can let the axle hang down so if you get your truck serviced or anything like that, you know, they jack it up by the frame. But these Air Lifts, you gotta be careful. You know, I wouldn't let them sit, you know, axle sitting there, hanging down overnight, or anything like that. You gotta be a little more conscious. With the Firestones, you know, it's something you're not gonna have to worry about. I probably wouldn't do it still, but they say you can. So that's my thought on that. And in terms of different types of enhancements, okay, you have like these, for example SumoSpring, a Timbren works very similar, same idea at least. With these styles, what they're gonna do is replace the jaunce bumper. A lot of them have progressive moldings and stuff in them to give you extra support. But with these, no maintenance, it's excellent, right You put it up there, you don't have to think about it, but you kinda get what you get. You know, you can't make your adjustments on the fly and you know, if you occasionally do some towing and just look for a little extra support, might be easier for you to use something like that. And then there's enhancements that are kinda in the middle of the road. You have Roadmaster makes a really good kit, Hellwig makes some good stuff. A lot of those are pretty much going to enhance your leaf spring pack. A lot of times, you know, you can make minor adjustments if you need to. A little more time consuming to do that, but it's something that you can always do. And with those two, I find it's just a good happy medium. You still have a decent ride when you're unloaded, but that extra support when you need it. It does seem like something that Air Lift does, is have several variations of the same kit more or less. And you might be wondering to yourself, all right, well this kit looks the same, why does it cost more or less than than the next one They're usually all pretty similar. A lot of times they'll have different kits made from different materials. So for example, the roll plates that go on top and bottom of the air spring might be stainless steel. Or instead of nylon air tubing you might get braided steel, and things like that. So if that's important stuff to you, you know, check it out. You know, if you live by the coast or something or worried about rust, that might be the way to go. And then there's some that have internal jounce bumpers built into them too. So like that jounce bumper, that factory when I showed you, imagine something like that inside of the air spring, right These ones don't have it, but they have kits that do. It's more of a fail-safe than anything. If you happen to get a leak or forgot to inflate the bags or something and the suspension did happen to bottom out, there would still be something there to prevent that from happening. But you know, you got a bunch of choices to go from and you can kind of go with whatever suits your needs the best. But other than that, at the end of the day, they're all gonna get the job done. We've had good luck with Air Lift. It's rare that we run into any issues with them. And they're good kits, you know, they seem to fit really well and work out, so really can't go wrong. But with that said, I think that'll about do it for our look at of the line of Air Lift LoadLifter 5000 air helper springs for the rear axle.