Lowering & Lifting Suspension?

[johnamullins]

Hi,

Not sure this is in the right spot for this question, but I'm looking for advice on where to buy an air (I assume?) suspension for my 2012 E250 that will allow me to raise and lower the vehicle.

I have a garage storage unit with a 7'-2" door opening and my van with the Penthouse is 7'-3"...so I'm looking for a way to squat the vehicle to get it in the garage.

Surely there is such a system out there?

Thanks for any help!

John

[Viejo]

If this is for longer term storage and you only need 2 or 3 inches, you could air down the tires, drive it in and re-inflate the tires. Don't forget to do the same on the way out.

If you need to go in and out daily or weekly, then that would be impractical. It would probably be cheaper to raise the garage door or find a new garage than to try and do a low rider job on the van.

If you're serious about the low rider route, it should be easy to find a good shop in SoCal.

[witoke]

Well, I know there was back in the 1950's....Citroen Hydropneumatic

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_grW1oApBo

(go to minute 9)

I think Range Rover adopted something similar a few years ago but other than a low rider shop I'm not sure where you'd go nowadays.

[carringb]

The two air-ride suspensions I know of. I'm sure there's lots of shops who could fab brackets and make their own setup too.

http://reycogranning.com/cat.php?p=3231&t=1

https://kelderman.com/taxonomy/term/102,98,26,34

These guys have a 4-corner setup with kneeling feature:
http://dallassmithcorp.com/

[mikracer]

If there isn't an off the shelf system, I would check out accuair. They build some trick stuff.

[Chance]

John, is that the storage unit shown on your Avatar? Also, do you tow with the van? I looks like a car sitting on trailer next to your van by storage door. Just curious on that -- was wondering if you are leaning towards air suspension for other reasons as well.

According to your measurements, will the van's roof hit both front and back? In other words, will you have to lower van both at front and rear axles to clear door?

[johnamullins]

Thanks for all the input so far guys! I will check out the links.

I have changed storage units from the one in my avatar. The new one is a double garage at an apartment building. It has a swing up wood door that I can't change or modify; the inside is plenty high. Its likely I could get in by lowering only the rear for now. So tantalizing because I only need an inch or two...

Will probably start by letting air out of the tires as suggested, but thinking about it, it would be useful to be able to level the vehicle on uneven ground, lower it for parking garages, etc, etc.

John

[carringb]

Originally Posted by johnamullins

Thanks for all the input so far guys! I will check out the links.

I have changed storage units from the one in my avatar. The new one is a double garage at an apartment building. It has a swing up wood door that I can't change or modify; the inside is plenty high. Its likely I could get in by lowering only the rear for now. So tantalizing because I only need an inch or two...

Will probably start by letting air out of the tires as suggested, but thinking about it, it would be useful to be able to level the vehicle on uneven ground, lower it for parking garages, etc, etc.

John

If you are not running at max capacity, you could also remove the lowest overload spring form the rear spring pack. If you are running at RAWR, you could still do that but you'll need to add airbags to compensate for the lost spring capacity. Either of the out-board mounted kits from Firestrone would work in this application, but if you are near capacity I would suggest the double-convuluted airbags over the tapered airbags because they don't need as much pressure to restore ride height. Chris at U-Joint Offroad has a nice E350 airbag kit with floating bags so you don't limit axle droop.