Building an air ride on the cheap!

today i'm back working on the 54. one of the most frequent questions i get is how the air ride in this thing works well today i'm going to show you and how i did it all and this thing lays frame for 300 bucks first thing i'm gonna do i'm gonna take you guys on a tour of the ridge runner and show you what it is i'm kevin and this is ridge runner garage [Music] so [Music] 1954 gmc pickup i got it it was literally a bunch of sheet metal no floor strapped to the original frame it now has an isuzu pickup frame it's got the airbag suspension rear sway bar ford 8.8 and you'll see these trusty looking nitrous tanks it was almost three years before the first guy realized that these are scuba tanks with nitrous deckers they are my air tanks for my airbags and funny enough the guy was from holland came with a brand new tailgate so i had to you know make sure that looked a little more rusty so shout out to my 40 and you know sanded it down made it look a little rusty tail lights big tail lights your big thing at the car show everybody likes them these are from a c7 caterpillar uh these are pinion gears that uh i do a lot of jeep stuff so uh ring and pinion um i have a whole bunch of that stuff laying around knock off cadillac 59 cadillac tail lights uh these two milk cans are my fuel tanks um they you know they i just tried to come up with something that i've never seen anybody use them for before you know i could have done the beer keg or any of that stuff and just i don't know man i just didn't think it was cool this this box here has got the battery in it it's actually a 12 gauge ammo box and that has the actual battery in it i love my like my little drive away fuel pump i usually drag it on the ground at car shows but i don't do it while i'm driving down the road because the simple fact that every 10 minutes somebody's trying to pull me over and tell me something's dragging from that truck how do you like the dome light in this thing uh something right out of somebody's basement and i use the 12-volt rv bulb there you go that's how that works in here got the steering wheel i always wanted mustang don't don't know why it really doesn't nobody really knows it's from a mustang but i liked it i dug it you know the scent of the rooms giant gas handle shifter that part right there is actually from a set of drag bars from a motorcycle that stuff that is the uh air valves which are actually water valves a water valve with a drain a pressure gauge all from home depot that's how the air system works this gauge is really just there for aesthetics but it does actually work when i let the air out the gauge actually does move got plenty of 12 12-volt accessories in there for you know charging the cell phones and gps things along that one those lines got my air conditioner up in the window out of a school bus got some cup holders down there there we go my center console made out of a street sign no i didn't steal that street sign somebody gave it to me that worked for the town but i have well anyway um vacuum cleaner intake that's a real electrolux it is cut open on the bottom there is an actual air filter in there and the mass airflow sensor is in there that is an actual working six liter uh two thousand two six liters got an nv forty five hundred five speed on it headers upside down and around this is actually these are actually nice stainless steel but there was so much heat under that i had to wrap them uh there's electric cutouts there is there exhaust system running down through the truck which i mean you know you kind of need it it was a little loud just hanging out of the side of the fender as you're driving around i gotta say you know got my uh triple e vodka overflow bottle perfect shovel uh handle for a hood prop gotta love that gmc i actually had the emblem but one of the the seer the g was missing was broke off so it's a drill bit and some horseshoes took the front brakes off of a hemi charger nice huge front 13 and a half inch front brakes on this thing uh which stopped great except for it does pull to the one side unfortunately big truck mirrors yeah so that's the 54. [Music] you heard me right 300 bucks this was on leaf springs torsion bars and now it's on full working air ride lace frame and yeah i did it all for 300 bucks with some stuff i ordered on ebay a grinder a welder a little know-how and some trips to home depot i'm going to show you how i made the frame cut the frame made the airbags fit and how i control it so this is how a c notch is done low budget instead of buying an expensive c notch for your frame quarter inch plate here here and on the back this is two and a half inch square tubing laid that over the frame once i built this structure i simply cut the frame out of it there you go an inexpensive c notch just like that yeah i mean i probably could have covered that up but again it's a rat rod and you want to show stuff like that you don't want it all party party so as you can see there's the shackle mount on the back of this this was on leaf springs well guess what what do you think of that mount is that the airbags bolted to that is a leaf spring mount with two holes drilled into it i cut the leaf spring mount off drilled two holes bolted to the air bag welded it to the axle this is a ford 8.8 out of a ford explorer pretty simple couple tries in making the sway bar mounts but there you go now for what we have here the upper airbag mounts now i've seen a lot of guys from these c notches that i was telling you about just do some straight bars across maybe with an x in the middle whatever you think looks nice i can't take actual credit for this top piece it was off a bent frame that i had bought a while back i thought it was cool cut it off welded it into here did some similar stuff um but that's really it it's got some quarter inch plate steel just cut out just a couple tabs here another quarter inch round plate made here um just two bolt holes i mean you know just bolts to the airbag pretty simple nothing really to it i took this lower control arm out to show you how easy it is to make something like this and here it is some of you might have already guessed by looking at this there and there you know what that is that's the original leaf spring mount and bushing each side here cut off both sides of the leaf spring and the piece of pipe welded between that is how you make a lower control arm on the cheap that bolt i mean you could use just a regular bolt weld it to it here if you want to this is actually just an old shock bolt that was welded to it and gusseted right there pretty simple here's a lower control arm mounted back in in the truck here this is another leaf spring mount that is welded to that ford 8.8 just a couple pieces of quarter inch steel welded into a square drilled hole through it pretty simple those are going to the original leaf spring mounts that the the frame had and same on the other side you have to excuse these welds i didn't really think i'd ever be showing anybody this stuff but that's a upper control arm this is made from just a piece of tubing cut and left over rubicon express bushings now you can actually buy a bushing a lot of four by fours will sell a bushing with a sleeve and collar all already put together and you can use that if you want if you don't want to make your own but there you go that's homemade pretty simple you can use straight pipe i happen to have a couple bends in these pipes and that's it i made my own upper control arm mounts let me tell you a little story about that okay there's one more thing to the rear suspension here and this upper control arm out same on both sides it is plate and another plate back here going through a bushing pretty simple seemed like it was really strong well it wasn't so racing somebody being my normal idiot self and at 100 miles an hour i shifted from fourth to fifth and guess what happened those tore out of the frame and that broke [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] yeah scary stuff right there uh smashed all the bottom of the truck blew an airline smashed all these fuel lines bent that stuff all the heck yeah so when you build upper control arm mounts you might want to just box them in be a good idea so the front suspension a bit more simple actually as you can see it was torsion bar see the torsion bar holding the lower control arm actually back here where they were mounted so the lower control arm upper control arm airbag the airbag drilled two holes in the lower control arm bolted it into the airbag simple mounted the top is just mounted to a plate of steel welded at an angle two holes mounted the top that's how that works now a lot of guys will run these with just the airbags i did for a little while and they ride pretty good there's no really they're not really too too bad but i decided to add a shock this is just a piece of shock mount off of a axle that i had just cut that off and a piece of round bar and welded a bolt to it unfortunately i have these two close to the caliper and when you turn the wheel all the way it actually hits the lower shock and pushes on the back the caliper wants to lock the brake up in hard turn situations but i'm going to cut this back off just slide that direction a little bit and i should be fine i'm going to take you through how the system operates now it all begins here this is just a little inlet air filter try to keep everything clean it's right around half inch in size this is an air tool oiler again uh probably ebay or amazon it is obviously you can see it's a low on oil i do have to add some oil in this i mean it really just matters how much you use the system which is odd because i can drive back and forth to work a few times and the system starts to get low but i can drive thousands of miles and only fill it a few times so pretty odd anyways air inlet here air tool oiler goes to the factory ac compressor [Music] yep the donor truck i took the drivetrain out of had air conditioning and that's it that air compressor the ac compressor is now my air compressor this is what pumps up my airbags you know it's factory you can probably find parts most auto parts stores it's an ls plenty replaceable while you're out driving around now i just tapped into the clutch ran a relay kept it powered all the time i'll show you that in a second and there's the outline right there air going out goes up here goes to what i have here and this is a oil water or oil air separator excuse me but to be honest with you you don't need this you can push the button out of here and there and maybe a little oil comes out of it but you don't need that you don't need it at all because it's a total loss system when you release the air it blows out onto the ground and there you know underneath the truck where the line is there's a small missile oil there and that's all you need now i said before that you keep the relay powered all the time and it just the ground side of it goes through this little air micro switch if you will and this is designed to turn on at 90 and turn off at 120. uh also a cheap part uh might have been gotten on ebay or amazon you know maybe about six bucks or so now this is the airline going back out goes under the truck goes to these guys here these are my air tanks i know they look like nitrous bottles but they're actually scuba tanks with nitrous stickers but it looks cool it's a rat rod you can use whatever you want for air tanks though you can use propane tanks you can use fire extinguishers anything that holds a pressurized air you can use especially when it comes to rat rods do something cool make something that you haven't ever seen i've never seen anybody ever use nitrous bottles or what looks like them anyways as air tanks i'm just finding i've really cleaned the truck out in a while since we just finding stuff under the seats here under the seat from the ac compressor or air compressor to this three-way manifold this is just a simple three-way manifold i got from harbor freight just an air manifold and that actually feeds both air tanks and the other side goes out to these water valves here they're just uh three-way or two-way ball valves inlet there there is how i control it that's the end that's the out that goes to this cool little oh you know altimeter gauge that i got uh that goes out to the ground there that's the front goes to the airbags and that's the rear these are the same ball valves but they have drain on them and i got these off of alpha amazon or ebay again also they are i think maybe a five or six dollar part this is all stuff that i've got from home depot just pieces and parts here that's how that worked pretty simple inexpensive stuff then as you can see from those valves on the floor came out this plastic airline to the airbags it's the same way in the front there's just the t under the seat for these so there you go that's how i did it it really is going to be directly related to how much scrap steel you might have laying around i seem to always have projects and have a bunch a set of airbags will cost you 75 bucks with the airline right around 100 bucks i think 100 bucks at the front 100 bucks of the back the the scuba tank slash nitrous tanks you can use anything you can find whatever's free uh any kind of air tank anything that holds compressed air and for the valving some trips to lows some trips to home depot some stuff i ordered on ebay some stuff i ordered on amazon and there you go that's how i did it now maybe this video will inspire you to do something similar for yourselves or at least it will show you how i made some of this stuff if you don't have maybe an ac compressor you can always maybe dig up something at the junkyard maybe you had an ls swap and you got a compressor just hanging off and you're wondering well here's a good use for it now if you don't want to use the ac compressor you can get a set of compressors or one single compressor i'd recommend a set because you never know one goes out you're pretty screwed get a set of compressors a set of decent ones will cost you around 300 bucks yeah you could probably get some cheaper stuff on amazon or ebay but go with something decent and that's actually what i'm going to do to this next i'm actually going to upgrade this and swiping switch it over to the electric compressors why because i'm going to put air conditioning in this thing and i think i have an idea how to do that from almost everything from the junkyard i want to possibly i'll buy an under dash unit i got a few ideas on how to make my own the only thing is though if you buy one of these under dash units they unless you can find a cool old one anything you can buy online which just is a box with a blower and maybe a knob or two and and and it's got the evaporator in it i mean they look like old atari 2600 games or something um they're they're ugly so maybe i'll make one out of out of ten and just put my own parts in it uh but anyway today i'm headed to the junkyard to see what i can find thanks for joining us with this video where we get to listen to neighbor dude become paul bunyan wait a minute i have a quiet spot won't last long so thanks for watching this episode of ridge runner garage i've got some more stuff to do to the 54. gotta hurry up but i've got to get it done in a few weeks we're actually headed up to cosby tennessee we're going on a moonshine run and it's put on by the petty foundation and adventure distilling company so uh petty foundation man i would it be cool to meet richard petty or something like that that would be awesome ah who knows probably not around but anyway that's what we're doing we're gonna shoot some videos of it and uh it'll be probably our next couple episodes so thanks for watching

Channel: Ridge Runner Garage

Views: 102,216

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Id: IwRcueOpeSs

Length: 20min 7sec (1207 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 09 2022