heathrobinson
Part of things
Broken everything
Posts: 848 
Club RR Member Number: 111
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Aug 27, 2017 22:20:14 GMT
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How hard would it be to put airbags on an 80's winnibago kinda thing? About 6 tons, IFS and leaf-sprung rear. The front looks really easy, the rear not so much - but there's a massive rail chassis to mount location bars to, and a lot of room.
My thoughts were, air-ride might be an easy way to stop the thing scraping it's massive ar2e on the lumps in festival sites, and maybe improve the ride over crappy potholed roads. Then I thought it might be good to be able to drop it's scabby black body down until the skirts scrape, and only half the big chrome rims are visible under the arches. Much better use of my time than fixing it's broken bits, obviously...
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Aug 27, 2017 22:51:14 GMT
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A lot of camper vans nowadays use air assisters for the springs to cope with the weight so I'd imagine something similar along those lines. there is a kit on eBay. get hold of a pair of Firestone bags from an artic trailer and get your compressor setup and away you go in theory. or use the entire setup from a range rover but God help the little compressor!
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stealthstylz
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 14,840
Club RR Member Number: 174
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Aug 28, 2017 13:48:40 GMT
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Would need truck size bits I'd imagine. They're fairly commonplace and cheap.
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Aug 28, 2017 15:22:20 GMT
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Could you not use bus bits? They must be cheap as chips.
I only suggest it as buses drop down to the kerb nowadays don't they to let chairs on.
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fad
Posted a lot
Posts: 1,781
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Aug 28, 2017 16:02:23 GMT
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Air assisted rear?
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heathrobinson
Part of things
Broken everything
Posts: 848
Club RR Member Number: 111
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Aug 29, 2017 18:09:22 GMT
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Thanks for the thoughts guys.
It's got simple air-assists on the front that you pump up with an air line, and I can see that helping lift the back a bit, bit I don't think it'd move it as much as I'd like for getting the humungous batty on the thing over lumpy bits without the current scraping and bashing. And definitely wouldn't get it any lower!
The front would be fairly simple, just swapping out the springs for appropriately hench bags (Truck bits are a good shout, as are bus bits), but it's whether the fab to get the rear sorted would be prohibitively tricky that's the question.
I suppose taking a few pics of what's there would be an idea
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Aug 29, 2017 19:27:46 GMT
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if you're after more travel you'll need to change it to a trailing link and panhard rod arrangement and do away with the leaves.
just a thought thinking back to the arrangement of bags on lots of things I worked on a while back, you could use the front half of the leaves for location, to keep fab work simple, bolt a perch to the leaf just behind the axle and lop off the remainder.
but yes, pictures of what you'd be working with will help a lot.
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heathrobinson
Part of things
Broken everything
Posts: 848
Club RR Member Number: 111
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Aug 29, 2017 20:00:54 GMT
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That's pretty astute thinking, nice one! I could even fab up a thing that uses the spring mounts. A panhard would be a piece of cake, so it'd just be about the mounting of the bags, and whether there'd be room under the chassis, or whether they'd need to go off to one side.
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