Wednesday, November 15, 2006

...ones man's opinion on the air-bags thing...

...the first time I drove a Toyota motorhome with inflated bags over the rear axle it was about 6 years ago and I was driving a 1992 Dolphin on the 56 freeway in San Diego...there was so much wheel hop in the back everytime I hit a seam in the concrete surface I thought I was going take flight for good. I had driven alot of Toyotas with the bags empty because the things have a life expectation of a few years ( if you don't snag the plumbing in something before that) and I hadn't felt deprived up to that point...and I sure didn't after that. Air bags have always been a "tongue weight" adjustment for compensating for the weight of your slide-in truck camper or the weight at the hitch when you pull two or three horses in their 2500#(empty) horse trailer...keeping the truck level when there's a inordinate weight source at the tongue area so the hardware at the hitch doesn't drag or ruin the level ride. When our Toyota's were built on the true one-ton chassis the suspension was adequate to spring the weight including our stuff...and over springing the rear end on a little motorhome like ours you'll get some pretty bazaar performance. Unless you've taken to pulling considerable weight on a trailer of some kind, chances are your Toyota motorhome already has a sufficent suspension system in place. If you're just bored and you want to repair or install your bags on your rig, inflate them in very small increments and test them in all driving conditions...I've always felt most comfortable at speed without that rear-end hop.

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