Hey Tranz a while back u ax'd me about the air ride in my rig. I had a wierd read out come up on the evic
air suspension compressor is cooling down please wait and then the air suspension system needs immediate service had the control module reflashed problem seems to be gone but anyway pertaining to this thread You know the 1/2 ton I had before this new one with air suspension. The std spring suspension is a huge diff in payload capacity over the air ride. My slide in camper was fine on the spring Mossy Oak I had but the Laramie air ride couldnt handle it The camper was 1400 lbs and would really rock the Laramie side to side and with the boat at the back (tongue weiight around 150) the air ride was really straining to get her back up there. Going back to springs next truck
Hey B I have a little time so I wanted to hit on what you were experiencing with your truck with air ride a little more.
It's not that you air ride wouldn't handle your set up its, just the way they have it set up on the 1500 trucks. Like Frug said, Ram has their 1500's set up for ride , comfort and fuel mileage. Your system works pretty much constantly so it's be-known to to me why they didn't put a compressor on them that is rated at 100% duty cycle. I have not done much research on the system on your truck but I do know that it lowers the truck above 50-55 for fuel mileage and then raises it back up under those speeds. Then it lowers when you get out to park and raises for off road use and so on. They had to pick a bag size that was a happy medium to be able to accomplish all that. If they had used bigger bags then the compressor would have had to been big to be able to supply the CFM necessary to adjust quickly.
Another problem you have is that with an air suspension like yours they can set it up to handle the maximum axle capacity right down to the pound because they know by the size of the bag how much air pressure it requires to hold that weight. I'm sure like anything else a OEM does they put a compressor in that is only capable of compressing just enough air to run the system plus maybe 10%. When you start figuring your weights that you were applying on the rear axle you were more than likely exceeding that quite a bit. The bad thing about truck campers is that they often have a center of gravity that is directly over the rear axle and sometimes behind . so that 1400# camper depending on where that center of gravity is can be applying more than that 1400# to the rear axle. Remember, every time your truck comes to a stop and shows 0 on the speedo the system analyzes your ride height and adjusts accordingly. If you come to a stop on a hill then the center of gravity of that truck camper has changed and could be applying more or less pressure to the rear or front axle depending on which way you are facing on that hill. Now add in the tongue weight of the Bullet. Did you have it on an extended receiver hitch to clear the TC? Remember my math in the earlier post. The farther away from the rear axle you get your ball the more it takes off the front axle and adds to the rear axle.
If I'm not mistaken your trucks RAWR is 3900#. If I were to take a guess your truck empty just sitting there has about 23-2500# sitting on the rear axle. That leaves you with 14-1600# left on the capacity of your axle. You were going over that with just the truck camper before you even got in the truck much less anything else you carry with you. I would also guess that beings you have a loaded up Laramie that your little yellow payload sticker says that you truck probably only come with around 900# of available payload.