I purchased a 52 or 53 F100. The guy that had worked on it previously has done alot of frame mods that are great but the Volare front suspension is not airbag friendly. Has anybody put an airbag system on the Volare suspension. I realize their is alot of fabricating that needs to be done but I just wanted to know if it worth it or not. I spoke a gentlman from No Limit that tried it once and he said he was about $600.00 in material and did the fabing himself. He said he would have rather put a new IFS alltogether if he were to do it again. I can see were that would be better if you have the $2500.00 extra to buy it but when you want to not drop your life savings in it you look for other options. Anybody have any words of advice?

 

Welcome to FTE, First of all the 52 and 53 are complete different trucks - do you have a VIN number or pic?

 

Big Ern

first... Welcome to FTE.

so you want to remove the Volare, hey bunkie ??? well, it's doable... been there done that. Had the volare, didn't like it. Actually had too many interference problems with steering boxes and headers and upper control arms and headers, and so on...

Axed it out, rebuilt the frame rails and installed a MII ifs. Actually "I" did it with the help of a master fabricator who talked me into it while under the influence of pain killers administered during a kidney stone attack (him, not me)

here's the poop, if you're interested

volare install article

if your interested in the MII install/upgrade that followed click no further

MII upgrade article

BTW this was on a '53 not a '52... theory is the same, but the frames are different I think..

later
John

 

Welcome !

Good to see another "Ern". Not too many of us around. I'm 6'-1"/265, does that rate me a "Big" Title ?

 

One thing that you might look into before you start a hackin is mini trucks.. What I mean is go pick up any minitruckin magazine and get some numbers/ names for the companies that are selling air suspension componants.. There is some newer technology that allows for air ride with out the typical bulky bag. They now have air "struts", which might work for you.. I know that it would be a lot easier to fab those up than to tear it all apart for another suspension.. Especially if not being compatiable with air bags is the reason.. Also, as popular as the volare is for these things, it is hard to believe that no one hasn't done it already..

Just trying to help!