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While bagged cars and trucks can be pretty low maintenance, that doesn’t mean you should leave them completely alone. Checking out your system and making sure everything is functioning correctly is pretty critical, because if you blow a bag you’re stuck — and nobody wants that.
So let’s go through a few typical options and see what you should do.
A Basic Maintenance Schedule
Let’s begin by talking about the frequency of your checkups to begin with, because it changes based on a few different factors.
New installations: Daily for at least a week.
If you just installed your air bag setup, you should double check everything after every trip. While that sounds like a lot, it’s temporary; you just want to be sure you didn’t forget to tighten a bolt or push in an air line far enough. Check for leaks by using a mix of a quart of water to a tablespoon of dish soap in a spray bottle and spraying down all your fittings. If you see bubbles, you’ve got a leak. Fix it.
Pro tip: when you’re done with the installation, torque down all of your bolts to spec. Then mark the bolts with Dykem Cross-Check, Vibra-Tite or even a paint marker. This lets you know the bolt was tightened down, and if the line is disturbed, the bolt has loosened.
Installations that are Less Than a Year Old: Monthly
Put the car or truck on jack stands, pull the wheels and inspect all of the moving parts. This involves your full suspension, so see if bolts are still torqued down correctly, the air bags are rubbing or an air line is dangling. The idea here is to make sure everything is still working right and functioning properly.
Doing this once a month for the first year helps you out if you’ve never had a bagged vehicle before. If you’re a pro, you might be able to push this out a little bit, depending on your driving habits.
All Installations: Set a Schedule Based on Climate and Frequency of Use
This sounds like a weird one, and it kind of is. But your air bag system is going to work differently in Arizona than it does in Maine. It all comes down to humidity and temperature. If you go through wild shifts in the temp that go all the way to freezing, you need to make different adjustments. If it’s very humid, like say in Florida, you may have additional water collecting in your tanks, which could freeze later if you take the vehicle somewhere it gets below 0 degrees.
Drain your air tank regularly. If you live anywhere but an arrid desert, you should have at least one water trap. This helps stop water from entering the tank in the first place and gives you an easy way to empty the liquid, but make no mistake, you will still get some in your tank (even us desert dwellers do). Empty both regularly, and higher humidity areas should do so more frequently.
If your area will dip below freezing, get some antifreeze that’s made for air brakes. Your air suspension shares a lot of parts with semi trucks, and that kind of antifreeze is what they use in the winter. The amount you use depends on the manufacturer, so check their labels.
Go over your bolts, lines and wiring on a regular schedule as well. We often think things are out of sight and out of mind, but stuff will break when you least expect it. Double check that your lines are good, your fuses aren’t broken and everything is rub-free.
It’s Your Call
Ultimately, you can maintain your vehicle as often or infrequently as you like. But we recommend you keep an eye on things so you don’t have problems down the line.
As always, if you have questions, don’t hesitate to reach out and ask.
