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

[LXtasy]

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.



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.



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



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.



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



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.



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.



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.



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.




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.



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







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.