F-450 sag and still with air bags
 

Question for those with the F-450 and heavy towing.

I have a friend with a 2011 F-450 with a Classy Chassis hauler bed (real nice BTW).
The bed adds about 1000 pounds over stock bed weight.
He has Firestone airbags.

He is a traveler, so the truck is packed with the essentials.
With his trailer hitched up and I'm guessing 3500+ of pin weight, the truck still has the sag, even with 55-60 PSI of air in the bags.

Anyone else experience this?

F-450 sag and still with air bags
 

Question for those with the F-450 and heavy towing.

I have a friend with a 2011 F-450 with a Classy Chassis hauler bed (real nice BTW).
The bed adds about 1000 pounds over stock bed weight.
He has Firestone airbags.

He is a traveler, so the truck is packed with the essentials.
With his trailer hitched up and I'm guessing 3500+ of pin weight, the truck still has the sag, even with 55-60 PSI of air in the bags. And it is still hitting the overloads

Anyone else experience this?

what is the RAWR capacity on a 450? 5000?
bags should be able to get to 100psi.. so 55 isn't much.

agree - his setup is not 'set-up' :)
bags are probably rated at 5000 lbs (depending on the set he got)
and if setting his at max psi doesn't lift it,
then he either has more pin wgt than he guesses 3500+ pin + 1000 bed + ????lb 'Stuff in the trunk' +......?

OR he has an issue with the bags - broken or only 1000 lb bags ?

let us know what you find please !

he said firestone bags, so 5000lb

can you use stableloads and bags together effectively?

IIRC, with the bags aired up the ride is unacceptable.

My old truck with 3500 pound of pin never needed more then 60psi, and that was a 2500 SRW

I don't remember what the psi was on my current air ride loaded, but unloaded I am only running 23-25 psi. And I have no leaf springs.

no springs?

Read through if you care, but don't waste your money.

https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/1...uspension.html

ok, now I remember. thus the higher bag pressure unloaded..
I only run 8 or 9psi.

I agree with putting more air in bags.Yes you can use both stableloads and bags together effectively.I am.
Im not using the stableloads to gain height ,bags do that.Im using them to stop the slap you can get when hitting bumps etc while towing when I hit the overloads.

just thought id throw this in

theres a guy who lives around me who hauls cars with his ram 3500 chassis cab i believe, either way he has a western hauler type bed on the back. he's got what looks like to me a 100+ gallon tank retrofitted from a semi truck mounted behind his cab he was filling up yesterday at the gas station i was filling up at. he was hauling 3 new silverados on his wedge trailer and what caught my attention was the fact that his truck was sitting level. so i asked him whats he doing to keep i like that he showed me these huge airbags he had mounted inside the frame i cannot remember the name of the kit but the springs were sitting about an inch away from the overloads. now clearly he was hauling over weight i used to have the same trailer and it weighed around 7500lbs dry via the cat scales near my house.

so larger bags is what i would recommend with keeping in mind they don't add to your gvwr

The Firestone airbags are rated to 100 psi. Has he tried more pressure? 55 psi in my bags will sit the truck the same height as empty with with 3100-3200 lbs of pin weight. My advice would be to take the bags up to 75-80 psi and see what happens.

Something just doesn't seem right in this situation. Either the weight of the body and the pin weight is more than he thinks it is, the truck springs are weak or a combination of the two. It sounds like he is dealing with 1200-1400 lbs more weight than me, but he is a 450 and I'm SRW 350. Did the upfitter than installed the body remove the helper springs or modify the stops that engage them?

Duane, I would go up to 75 psi or so while loaded. My pin weight on my camper is around 3100 pounds and I run 35-40 psi in the bags and the F350 sits level, so he must have quite a bit more than 3500 or so. I would see if he could go by a CAT scale and weigh it loaded with truck's front and rear wheels on separate plates..as well as the trailer wheels. Then drop the trailer and just weigh the truck. Then subtract the rear axle weight of truck from the trailer/truck axle weight and it will give you the pin weight. I've seen people run 90psi on Firestone's before and they do fine. They are rated for 100psi, so anything under that I would think should be ok. The fact that his bed is already 1k pounds over the stock one will cause it to squat some. Before I added the onboard Viair system, I had to just play with the pressures to get the feel and look I wanted. Also, another thing he could do that is pretty cost effective, is change the rear blocks under the springs to the SRW 4" ones. That will raise the rear up for sure!

Dang MATT...I should've typed faster!! LOL

See my post in your other thread. Go up on PSI and/or change out the rear blocks for the F350 SRW ones that are 4" high and that will help a lot.