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Get Air Spring Suspension and a Four Link System

Both Air Suspension and Four-Link? Here's the Scoop
By Bob Carpenter
Photography by Randy Clark
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Few parts are required to make the switch to air-spring suspension. The TCI kit makes it a relatively easy swap.
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First, take apart the old Mustang II front suspension to get the lower A-arm out.
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Don’t forget to use a spring compressor when loosening the ball joint. Be safe.
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The air spring is located on the new TCI lower A-arm with a mounting plate.
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The retrofit kit is ready to bolt onto the Mustang II front suspension. The airbags are from Goodyear.
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Since the air spring is not as long as the Mustang II spring, you will need to bolt on this supplied spacer.
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Slide that puppy into position and bolt it up.
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The kit includes new shocks. They will be located behind the lower A-arms. A new upper shock mount is included with the kit.
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Here’s another view of the upper shock mount.
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Here’s an important step. A bumpstop (included with the kit) must be installed to prevent the suspension from bottoming out in the event of total air loss.
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Hook up the rest of the suspension, and you’re ready to run the air lines.
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For the rear suspension on this F-100, we went with one of TCI’s four-link suspension systems and the air-spring retrofit kit. This is nice stuff.
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The front four-link bar mounts line up with existing holes in the frame, so you can’t botch it.
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Some of the holes need to be enlarged.
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This piece is a simple bolt-on.
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The bars are attached using Grade-8 hardware.
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Here we’re measuring to make sure the bars are all the correct length.
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The four-link bars attach to a bracket that’s welded to the rearend. Here we’re installing the shock mount to this bracket.
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The air spring will be mounted to this plate. We had to trim just a little to make it fit our 9-inch rearend correctly.
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The TCI air-spring kit is supplied with a crossmember that is used as a shock mount.
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The crossmember butts up against the frame boxing plate. You’ll have to make your own plate.
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Here we’re attaching the air spring to the upper spring mount.
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We marked the location of the air spring on the rearend.
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The upper air-spring mount is welded to the frame boxing plate.
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When you use a four-link system, you need to control side-to-side movement with a Panhard bar. TCI supplies this with its kit. One end attaches to the rearend with this bolt-on bracket.
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The other end of the Panhard bar is attached with a bracket that’s welded to the boxing plate on the frame. Now this truck is ready for the air plumbing, and we’ll be cruising real soon.
Hot Rods & Custom Stuff
2324 Vineyard Ave.
Escondido
CA  92029
Total Cost Involved Engineering
1416 W. Brooks St.
Ontario
CA  91762

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