Bag Riders Manual Air Management Installation Part 2; Shoebox Ford Ep21 

It took a while to make solid progress on this sucker, so hang in there. I was in your position at once too.

The check valve isolated the post-compressor system from the compressor. It protects the compressor and keeps it from losing air. The Bag Riders kit came with mine but there's also an option to purchase an upgraded version as well.

Push connectors have a range of quality and subsequent performance. How much air pressure are you running? I don't have experience with digital air pressure gauges besides displays on controllers, like the Ridetech E5 where the sensor delivers it's signal to a controller. I'd suggest sticking with brands known for quality and you should be just fine for reliability. Air pressure is an easy thing for a sensor to monitor so I'd guess the rate of issues is kind of rare.

Thank you! Glad we can help! Don't hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions

Thanks for the feedback man! I've always tried to run Hitachi SPDT relays so maybe I should swap these out before issues happen. That's good to know about the issues you had with your 380C. Scary stuff. So you're running a pair of 444s?

@@DadModsMedia Yelp now retired the 380c only had the 1 but with dual 444c s lot more and fills tank lot faster 😀

Yeah I could see the dual compressors being a game changer. The single takes forever to make the initial fill. Refill isn't awful, but I'd love to cut the time in half some day.

@@DadModsMedia cool man good luck on your build 👍

Appreciate the kind words and insight!

Nah man, not a dumb question at all. So on manual paddle valves you have 2 male barbs and a small orifice. The barbs are an inlet and outlet. Inlet is the feed side from the tank, outlet goes to the air bag and the orifice is a discharge. So when you flip the paddle up it opens the inlet/outlet circuit and when you depress the paddle valve it dumps the outlet side (bag side). Does this make sense?

​@@DadModsMediaNot really sorry, I bought a used system (vera 2 air suspension manual controller) and the way it said to plumb it was to take the top 2 barbs and and split them off to the gauge and the bags and the bottom two are T'ed off and the run to the air tank...I didn't see anything else on the setup...and thanks for your reply....I just don't want to mess anything up..

​@@DadModsMediaI'm not quite sure what you mean when you say orifice

@@DadModsMedia when you say orifice are you referring to the small little hole on the back of each of the pedal values themselves

@@StanDepew I'm not familiar with the Vera valves and the quick googling I did I'm not finding a manual paddle valve with more than 2 barbs per switch. So I can't speak on the exact assembly. What I will say, is I've never seen a manual paddle valve that dumps air out of a line. Every one I've ever seen has a small orifice on the backside that bleeds off the air when the paddle is depressed. It looks like, from another comment, that you did find a small hole on the back. I would wager that is where the air is purged from. If you are worried about assembling the kit wrong, you would always play around with it on the workbench and test it out. Pick up one of these and you can use your shop's air compressor to feed air into the system: amzn.to/3rcYxwt Air your compressor up to like 25psi or so, grab your tire inflator fitting and attach it to the fitting I linked. Cut some small pieces of DOT line and push em onto the barbs, then use the push-connect schrader valve fitting to test out each line and see what the valve does when operating the paddle. Plus, it's a good idea to have one of those push-connect schrader valves in your vehicle in case your air compressor ever fails and you need to add air to the tank through the water drain line.

Well this is one of those questions that has a basic answer and a complicated one, so I'm going to spare you the novel I'd have to write to explain air spring "rates" relationship to air pressure. "How do you know if bags are fully inflated?" - basic answer is; when you reach ride height. Appropriate sized air bags will lift the vehicle without significant amounts of air pressure. For instance, the shockwaves up front on my car begin lifting around 60psi, can cruise at 80psi and if I want to fully lift it with max ground clearance I'll go to 100psi.

"What if bags get over inflated?" - most likely your system won't reach the limits of the air bag. Most air suspension systems that I've played with aren't going over 150psi and most air bags are rated well over 200psi. For instance the Slam Specialties 2500 is rated to 250psi. Yes, there are air compressors and tanks comfortable at 250psi but I see no reason why you'd ever need air pressures even remotely close to that on a bagged car or truck.

I haven't found a formula to determine air pressure to lift that can be applied to every vehicle. There are simply too many factors. Every vehicle weighs different, different air bags, and even suspension geometry plays a roll.