Friend's Pantina project truck. Doing air ride suspension.
 

So me and Shaun Messenger rolled out to a friends shop (fink406 here on the board) to start tackling the air ride suspension on his truck. This is the bodystyle truck that I am in love with and will be picking one up very very soon. Anyways off we go to pictures. If you care. Frame is a longbed s-10 frame.

We rolled the truck from one shop to the other to get it on the lift. This of course helped out a ton throughout the day. Well until I decided to headbutt the crap out of the front fender.

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Here is the frame with just the lower control arm off . Frame will be taken down when all work to it is completed to get cleaned and sprayed.

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Here is me and James grinding away on both upper spring pockets. This is always the worst part of this project IMO.

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Here is a shot of the upper spring pocket cut out. A lot of material has to be cut out of the way for clearance on the air bags.

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Of course we have to do mockup of the air bag to make sure no rubbing of the bag will occur. I am a big believer in room around the bags. I think by the end of the day I had James believing the same thing. lol

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Ok. I believe this picture is pretty cool. It shows James welding in my filler plates for the lower control arms. For clearance around the bag on the control arms you have to "dehump" them. We also plated the lower control arm with 1/4" thick plate. Drilled a hole in the center for the lower bag mount.

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This is just a quick shot of the truck on the life. I was messing around with some settings on my phone with this pictures.

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Here is a shot of the lower control arm all welded up. This picture does not show the contours I fought for the plates. But gives you an idea of what had to be done.

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This is a picture of the bag finally mounted in the spring pocket with the air hose all attached. Finally stage before it gets buttoned all up.

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Here is a shot of once everything was all put together and the air bags deflated. I have an idea of how to prevent the issue of possible tire carnage. But that won't be performed until the rear is done. Once rear is laid down the front will come up some. But in all honestly, I believe it won't be much as there is still suspension travel left.

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Here are some just final shots of the vehicle with the front suspension aired out.

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Hoping to get the rear sitting on the ground either this week or next weekend. I know this may not be your cup of tea. But I think it is pretty awesome and at least this classic is not going to the crusher.

nice pics...tell Fink i said wassup.

good guy.

l like the fab work, ain't this the truck that he only had as loose parts: door, fender, & cab? long way since was pile of parts.

Maybe. He has a few of these. This is my favorite body style of trucks and he knows i have no problems helping him with them. I will be getting my own very soon i hope.

I think it's pretty cool. I've always loved those trucks. What year s10 frame is it?

80 model longbed. I think 85. Any longbed regular cab s10 can be used. You either buy a kit to make it work or make one.

Cool project! I love those old chevy trucks also.

What kind of bags are you using? What's that plan for laying out the back? 4 link or something with the leaf springs?

The bags are 2600 lb bags, I forgot the brand. Pretty thick ply which is a plus. Rear will be a forward facing 2 link with panhard bar. Not my first choice in design but it will work. I have a feeling james will be getting a jumpstart on the rear. Bag placement in the rear imo is crucial to ride quality and lift.

That's the set up on my '39 Ford in the rear with 2600 bags. It rides pretty crappy with no weight back there. I'm going to step down to a 2500 bag I think and see how that works. Some day I may change it completely.

Keep the larger bags. Does your rear setup have shocks? Are the bags close to the pivot point on the bars? If they are sitting on top of axles then it will ride like crap

Here's a picture of the setup from the previous owner. Yes I have those shocks on the back and they look like hell so they probably are bad. I was going to try changing them first. Do you think it will ride worse with a 2500 bag?

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Your shock angles seem to be one issue. Panhard bar is another. Read this article. http://www.afcoracing.com/tech_pages/panhard.shtml. with what you experience you might find out the issue is panhard bar location and angle. The idea in airbag suspension is to run the biggest bag possible (sometimes to big is overkill, but 2500/2600 is the norm anyways)

I think the shock angle looks worse in the pic than it really is but I agree that has an effect. Thanks for the panhard bar link. I quickly read through it. I'm going to read it completely when I have more time. It seems like it was focused on body roll issues and tire loading. Not really my main problem. I just have a rough riding, bouncy car in the back. Kind of like hydraulics type of ride.

Bouncy/rough ride is usually too much pressure related. On a bagged setup i usually set the panhard bar parallel to the rear end, going over the top of the pumpkin. Only downside to panhard bars is that the rear may shift side to side during the course of travel of bags. As those shocks adjustable by chance?