Photog's Lifted Suspension 2009 Roadtrek 190V

[Photog]

Here are the pictures.

2" front (coil springs) and 4" rear (lift blocks) lift:


This is the new space we have between the suspension and the bump stops. Before the springs were installed, the suspension was in contact with the bump stops, all the time; causing the R/T to have a rough ride quality. The suspension now has room to move upwards, smoothly, before contacting the bump stops. The new springs are stiffer than the factory springs, but softer than the bump stops. It now has a much nicer ride.

Good spacing for smooth suspension travel.

[booster]

That doesn't look to radical at all!

Our O7 was 1" higher in the rear than the front from the factory, the springs put the front up 2", like yours did, and the Airlift bags in the rear got us about 3" at 90 psi (out of 100 max), so we are now just about 2" higher in the rear when aired all the way up. I looks very similar to yours when we have it up. If we run the bags at 30-35 psi, we are level, plus or minus for load.

What do you measure from wheelwell opening to ground, front and rear, when you are on level ground?

You can also see on your pics that the suspension has totally bottomed out on the side pictured. The black on the flutes of the bumpstop is from being completely compressed inside the guide above it, meaning the guide was all the way down to the lower A arm.

[Photog]

Booster,
We are heading out tomorrow after work, and we will be finishing our packing tonight and tomorrow. I should be able to get the measurements while we are traveling, and post it when I get a WiFi link.

I noticed the marred bump stops when I did the knuckle install last year. I figured it was marks from being mashed into the retainer cup, I looked for metal-to-metal marks, and found none. I bet it was close though.

The next step will be to get the leaf springs massaged, to replace the rear 4" lift blocks, and get the rear springs up off of the overload leaf.

I think a perfect suspension installed by Roadtrek, would be a pair of these Otto-Max coils and an additional leaf pack for the rear axle. I believe most people would be very happy with the smooth ride, and the extra 2"-3" of ground clearance.

[booster]

Originally Posted by Photog

Booster,


I think a perfect suspension installed by Roadtrek, would be a pair of these Otto-Max coils and an additional leaf pack for the rear axle. I believe most people would be very happy with the smooth ride, and the extra 2"-3" of ground clearance.

I couldn't agree more, but they probably would be better off with air bags, so they would be adjustable for weight and model. The 2+ inches you gain is huge when it comes to bottoming out.

[booster]

The slop is finally off the roads here in Minnesota, so we managed to squeeze in a little test drive today. I have been very eager to see if the sway bar add on helped. We "lucked out" in that it is very windy today, and that is the condition the sway bar add on was to address. 20 mph wind with gusts at 30+, according to the weather when we got home.

We used normal 65/80 tire pressures, had about 7 gallons of fresh water in the tank, none in the others. Only 1/4 tank of fuel. More water and fuel have always helped in the wind, so this was a tougher test. Air bags were at 30 driver, 45 passenger, which gave us 35 1/2" wheelwell height at the front and 36 1/4" at the rear. The ride was very good at those pressures as the overload leaf on the springs is not in contact, and air bags ride very smoothly.

With the lift, alignment and Bilsteins, the Roadtrek handled very well at the end of last year. With no wind it was as good as I could expect. With wind it still moved around a little, but much less than it had before, and certainly not anything that was horrible or dangerous. It just required more attention than I like to give while touristing.

We were very pleasantly surprised with how it drove. You could immediately sense that the rear was more stable. As expected, the rear bar made the steering more responsive to input, requiring less wheel motion to get a correction. It is now very close to what a car correction would be. There is less lean and much more stability on curves, with very little steering input needed. In the wind, it is a lot better. It still moves a little when hit by a gust, but the correction needed is small and very predictable, with little chance of overcorrection and oscillation. It is much easier to drive and stays in the "two finger" driving range almost all the time. I would guess it has added at least 10 mph to the comfortable driving speed in the wind, which is way more than I expected.

Without the other changes, the rear bar probably wouldn't have had as much effect, but would have still been significant, I think. All the changes together appear to work very well.

I just need to get under it again to do a final tightness check on all the mounting hardware (good test as the roads are in horrible condition here).

[booster]

As long as I had to go under and check tightness on everthing, I decided to do it on the very flat part of the driveway and check for any swaybar preload at the same time. I was suspicious that I might have some preload, as I built the setup in the shop, which has a sloped floor to the drain, making it very hard to get the van and the suspension at the right levels all at the same time.

I loosened the end links to take all tension off them, and then leveled the van with the air bags, which came out at much different pressures than when the bar links were tight. Wound up at 35 3/4" on both fronts and 36 1/4" on both rears. I then measured the distance from the swaybar end where the endlink mounts, to the frame mount where the other end of the endlink mount. They measured 1/2" different, so that much bias load was being put on the bar, and transferring weight from one side to the other, thus the different airbag pressures. I shortened the endlink spacer tube 1/2" on the tighter side, and tightened both sides to the same amount of compression on the bushings (two turns). When I checked the rear heights, they had not moved at all, so the bias load was taken out.

We drove around a bunch, running errands, and it handled very well in another day of very high winds.

Eliminating the bias loading of the bar probably didn't change anything for us, as we adjust side to side with the bags anyway, and that counteracts the bar bias. It would be more of an issue if you didn't use the airbags, and in that case you might want to intentionally bias the bar to get the rear level side to side.

[Ron J. Moore]

Wow, Booster and Photog , you guys show the thoroughness of your research. Roadtrek should take note of your endeavors and maybe they could raise future ones and alleviate a lot of folks concerns. I installed the Bilsteins about 10k miles into having my RT and they have performed good for me. Had I seen all this info a few years back....I'd be finding a way to have it done. Congrats to all the contributors - keep it coming. Safe travels.

[firehawk335]

Since I now consider you guys the Roadtrek suspension gurus. I'd like to get your opinions.
Two competing ideas, one is like photog, all spring suspension front and rear; the other is using the stock suspension and putting airbags on all four corners. I will only be going for a 2 inch lift above stock to get the suspension geometry back in spec.

(I've got a 2009 Roadtrek 190v, looks exactly like photog's before the lift)

I like the idea of airbags on all corners as I can then use the airbags to assist in leveling rather than all blocks; and with leveling sensors and the proper controller the airbags will automatically adjust for changing loads. My concern is the robustness of airbags... are they prone to failure? That's kindof why I'd like to keep the stock suspension and add airbags, that way if there is a failure I can at least use the regular springs to get back home. I'm looking at moving back to Alaska in the next year or so and anticipate a lot of my use will be away from local repair shops/my garage.

I realize that the air suspension will be more expensive but that is not a real concern.
Here's the control system I'm considering http://www.ridetech.com/store/contro...ay-system.html

Now for another topic....
Dog-leg traction, I got stuck at the farm the other day; just a little wet; that's when I found out this van only has single-trak. Anyone else have this issue? Now I'm considering a posi-track center chunk and was wondering about gearing, keep the stock gears or change to a higher ratio for better mileage? Or will power significantly suffer.

And 4wd...
What are our options?

Looking for your valued opinions...

Thanks,
-Chip

[booster]

Originally Posted by firehawk335

Since I now consider you guys the Roadtrek suspension gurus. I'd like to get your opinions.
Two competing ideas, one is like photog, all spring suspension front and rear; the other is using the stock suspension and putting airbags on all four corners. I will only be going for a 2 inch lift above stock to get the suspension geometry back in spec.

(I've got a 2009 Roadtrek 190v, looks exactly like photog's before the lift)

I like the idea of airbags on all corners as I can then use the airbags to assist in leveling rather than all blocks; and with leveling sensors and the proper controller the airbags will automatically adjust for changing loads. My concern is the robustness of airbags... are they prone to failure? That's kindof why I'd like to keep the stock suspension and add airbags, that way if there is a failure I can at least use the regular springs to get back home. I'm looking at moving back to Alaska in the next year or so and anticipate a lot of my use will be away from local repair shops/my garage.

I realize that the air suspension will be more expensive but that is not a real concern.
Here's the control system I'm considering http://www.ridetech.com/store/contro...ay-system.html

Now for another topic....
Dog-leg traction, I got stuck at the farm the other day; just a little wet; that's when I found out this van only has single-trak. Anyone else have this issue? Now I'm considering a posi-track center chunk and was wondering about gearing, keep the stock gears or change to a higher ratio for better mileage? Or will power significantly suffer.

And 4wd...
What are our options?

Looking for your valued opinions...

Thanks,
-Chip

Having air bags at all 4 corners was my first choice, but I could not find any front air suspension of any kind. The shocks are inside the springs and no airshock version made, that I could find. The only place to mount a bag would be in the bumpstop area, and I don't know that I would want to put that much weight and impact on that area, all the time. When they finally started to make higher rate springs was when we were able to do what I considered a good lift. I don't care for spring spacers (either under or in the springs), and lift spindles have problems of their own, geometry wise.

Changing rear springs will give you the lift in the rear, but doesn't give you any side to side or front to rear leveling to adjust for load. The airbags give both and also the option to go an inch or two higher if you need a touch more clearance.

One thing that you will find is that you can't get a very big side to side leveling effect with the airbags. They are very good for picking up weight and bringing you back to level, but those are usually under 1" changes. Trying to get level side to side in a campsite with the bags, you are lucky to 1.5" (out of about 3" travel) with one full and one empty. Front to rear they are quite useful. The front swaybar fights very hard to keep the bags from lifting unevenly, and we have found with our new rear bar added, it is even harder to offset with the bags.

We do have an onboard compressor and individual bag controls and gauges.

For me, with the available parts, the best choice was the springs in the front, and airbags and swaybar in the rear. It gave us the 2" and adjustability we wanted. I am sure others will have different opinions, as they may have different requirements.

Having a limited slip would be a very good thing, we have also considered it and my do it once the warranty if off (Chevy already replaced our differential once). Roadtrek uses 4.11 gears, but Pleasure-way uses 3.73 gears in essentially the same van (Roadtrek uses the 3.73 in the lighter 170's). Pleasure-way and Roadtrkek owners all seem to talk about mileage in the same 15-17 mpg range, so I don't know if the gearing would do any good. You may just wind up spending more time in the lower gears, using more fuel, and break even in the long run. I do know that acceleration would be slower.

[Photog]

Wow, this thread is getting better all the time.

So much info since we left for our 11 day trip.

As mentioned a few posts up, we are 2" taller at the rear. Fully loaded it is more like 1.5" taller at rear. This turned out to be a good thing. Except for campgrounds, most places are not level. We found it very easy to level-up, for the night, by just parking with the front end, up-hill. We were within a 1/4-bubble every night, and I only needed a single 1" block, one night. This really was great, when traveling every day. If we were to be in a "level" campground, I know exactly how much to put under front tires (no guessing).

"Thank you" to Booster, for the excellent update on the sway bar results. We noticed similar improvements for driving in cross-winds. Our recent trip took us through some wide-open deserts in northern Nevada, and southern Oregon. The R/T was very stable, and felt more like a car and less like a boat. The R/T still has plenty of "sail" area, so the wind does have a strong effect; but like Booster said, it takes less steering activity, to counter the windy conditions. We were running fully loaded, and sitting on the overload springs (rear), so I am sure we were more stable (in general) than the light-load conditions that Booster tested.

Our current shocks need to be replaced. These came with the lift kit, from Performance Lifts (see 1st post). These shocks do not have enough "valving" to resist the motions of the heavy van. They probably work great on a lightly loaded pickup truck (for which they were designed). I will be looking into the Bilstein shocks. I will need shocks that are a few inches longer than stock, as the front suspension is travel-limited by the factory shocks. Our rear suspension is 4" taller than stock, and the springs I want to use will allow even more travel.

As I have said before, I don't like lift blocks for leaf springs. I want to have the factory leafs re-curved, and add at least one more leaf (maybe two). I don't want the overload spring to contact, until just before the leaf is flat (same is it is now). This will allow about 3" of up-travel, before the overload makes contact.

[Photog]

Firehawk,
Airbags are a great idea. But, as Booster said, the front may be difficult, since the shocks run through the center of the coil spring. This is where most front airbags would be mounted. The solution might be complicated and expensive, but it would go something like this:
1) Replace upper control arms (UCA) with aftermarket UCAs from Cognito. Cognito makes UCAs with shock attachment points. Many of the aftermarket UCAs change the geometry of the front suspension, to account for changes that happen during a lift. If you use the airbags to create some lift, the Cognito UCAs may aid in being able to set a proper alignment.


2) Then add the Cognito dual shock hoop kit. This is welded or bolted to the frame.


3) You may have to use a wheel, with less offset, to keep the tire away from the shocks.

With these changes, you will be able to remove the shock from the factory location, and have single or dual shocks mounted up higher. You may have to install a plate, over the factory shock mounts, to give a smooth surface for the airbags to press against.

As I have had some geometry issues with a lift-spindle installation, I can not guarantee that these parts will not need some custom custom fab work, to make it all work properly.

Rear axle traction issues:
With an air suspension installed, you will have a compressor and air tank. With that, you could have an ARB Air-Locker installed in the rear axle. This would allow you to flip a switch to convert the open differential to a spool. It has no negative effect on the ABS system.


4:11 gears have given us 14-16mpg, and still allow for towing. If you go to a 3:73, you may not notice and mpg improvement, and towing ability will suffer.

4WD: Quigley will add an IFS 4x4 system, Advanced 4WD will add a 1-Ton straight axle 4x4, and Salem Kroger will add a straight axle 4x4.
http://www.salemkroger.com/index.html
http://www.advanced4x4vans.com/index.htm
http://www.quigley4x4.com/

[peteco]

Booster,

Is there any difference in the amount lift you could get from the Firestone system versus the Air Lift air bags?

Also, with the Firestones did you have to position the frame bracket differently from the Firestone instructions due to the lift block (2" I think) that Roadtrek has between the spring and axle?

I am planning to put airbags on my 2006 RT 210 and am leaning towards the Firestone system. I do not plan to add a swaybar at this point.

I am also planning to add the Tuftruk front spring 1617, and Bilstein shocks.

Thanks,

Pete
2006 RT 210P

[booster]

Originally Posted by peteco

Booster,

Is there any difference in the amount lift you could get from the Firestone system versus the Air Lift air bags?

Also, with the Firestones did you have to position the frame bracket differently from the Firestone instructions due to the lift block (2" I think) that Roadtrek has between the spring and axle?

I am planning to put airbags on my 2006 RT 210 and am leaning towards the Firestone system. I do not plan to add a swaybar at this point.

I am also planning to add the Tuftruk front spring 1617, and Bilstein shocks.

Thanks,

Pete
2006 RT 210P

The Airlift and Firestone had very similar lifting range. The Airlift has 5K capacity the Firestones 3.5K so both should be enough.

My understanding is that Roadtrek put the 2" blocks in because the 210's sat so low because of the rear weight and overhang compressing the springs that far. If you go to airbags, I would think you could take out blocks so that you can get the springs up off the overload leaf for better ride, without the body going too high and needing longer shocks.

I still have the Firestone setup I took out of ours (with the air fill install kit from the Airlift). 1/2 the cheapest price you can find new, if interested.

[peteco]

Originally Posted by Photog

Getting everything apart was easy, compared to getting it all back together. I did it all in about 6 hours. If I did it again, it would take less than 4 hours. The new springs, from Otto-Max (part number TTC-1617), are beefy. The wire thickness is larger than the factory springs. Because of this, it was difficult to install the spring cushions (top & bottom).

Photog,

What did you use to compress the front springs for removal and installation? The GM Service Manual calls for an OTC 7045B spring compressor tool. This looks great but is about $200.

My limited past experience is you don't want to use anything cheap on a coil spring, especially one as stiff as the TTC-1617.

Thanks,

Pete
2006 RT 210P

[booster]

Originally Posted by peteco

Photog,

What did you use to compress the front springs for removal and installation? The GM Service Manual calls for an OTC 7045B spring compressor tool. This looks great but is about $200.

My limited past experience is you don't want to use anything cheap on a coil spring, especially one as stiff as the TTC-1617.

Thanks,

Pete

The factory manual says to use the OTC compressor and then take the spring out by taking loose the inside lower control arm pivot bolts and swinging the control arm down to get the spring out. I didn't have access to the spring compressor, and it cost more than the labor to hire it done, so I took it to the truck spring shop who had also been the ones to find the OttoMax springs for me. They did it the old fashioned way, by separating the lower ball joint and lowering the control arm, without compressing the spring. The tech said the old one decompressed completely coming out, so it was totally safe (no flying spring, which can happen). He did say the new one was pretty tight, and difficult to get in, but doable. It was under $100 each to put in, and it had to go there for the alignment anyway, so it was well worth it.

Jim

2006 RT 210P

[peteco]

I'll check to see what they charge to do the work. If it is around $200 I may buy the tool to have on hand. I plan to keep this vehicle for a long time.

[booster]

Originally Posted by peteco

I'll check to see what they charge to do the work. If it is around $200 I may buy the tool to have on hand. I plan to keep this vehicle for a long time.

The other thing that I forgot to mention was that OTC could not give me a rating on the spring compressor when I checked with them to see if it would handle the 2500# per side springs compared to the originals at 2100#. It probably would, but they wouldn't commit to any rating on the compressor.

[peteco]

Originally Posted by booster

The other thing that I forgot to mention was that OTC could not give me a rating on the spring compressor when I checked with them to see if it would handle the 2500# per side springs compared to the originals at 2100#. It probably would, but they wouldn't commit to any rating on the compressor.

Do you know what tool your installer used to compress your springs?

[booster]

Originally Posted by peteco

Do you know what tool your installer used to compress your springs?

As I mentioned, they totally decompressed when he lowered the arms, so no compressor was needed.

[peteco]

Originally Posted by booster

As I mentioned, they totally decompressed when he lowered the arms, so no compressor was needed.

How did he get the new springs in?