Spring Air Leak Shakedown.
I found 7 different air leaks over the last couple of days.
A couple I knew were there, a few that I have sealed on previous spring roundups and a couple new ones that may have been leaking all along. Still won't hold air but it is trying real hard;)
I opened the aux air filter in the steering bay. The filter element is a small spool of twine held inside the housing with a spring:eek: I have never seen anything this lame on anything I have ever worked on. It looks like something out of the 40's. I like it. If I can seal the flange between the top and bottom of the housing where it was bubbling I'm keeping it:D
Now I need to straighten out the 2 different front bags get the eyelets to keep from pulling off the front shocks and find that thunk up there and then that bus will be a Happy Camper.
Dale J. Has It Right! Broken Shocks
:mad: I pulled my wheels off the front axle with the bus up on stands. I let the axle hang with the air bags and shocks still attached.
I measured the center to center dimension of the shock absorber mounting studs. It came out to 23 15/16"
I removed the bottom bolts on the air bags, removed the shock absorbers and let the axles drop if they could. They did drop. With the shocks removed the center to center dimension between the shock absorber mounting studs was 24 1/8", or about 3/16" greater. The shock absorbers do limit the suspension travel.
Despite being loose, the air bags did not lift off the bottom mounting plate so they do not limit suspension travel, nor are they so short that they stretch out when the axle distance down is at the limit of the shock absorber. With the shocks out I could bounce the suspension up and down a little so there is even more movement possible than when it just hangs straight down. Evenb with the extra drop from bouncing the air bags remained in contact with their base indicating they are sufficiently long in height.
So here is the moral of this story: If your suspension is fully extended, on either side or equally on both sides either because you have raised the bus or the terrain is so steeply sloped, you have the potential to break one of the rings from the end of the shock absorber. Dale has it exactly right. The mechanic that made the statement about how easy it was to break shocks has it correct. The dumb part is having a bus that has no mechanical limit to suspension travel.
If you do not want to snap the end rings off your shock abosrbers, do not transition any places where one side of the front suspension is forced to be fully extended such as having the rear of the coach level, while the front axle is "twisted" with one side up and the other down. Using the level low to level a coach on a sloped site may be OK, but do not drive with the coach in level low mode.
The reverse of this situation may also be true, but I doubt that. In the lowest position the air bags have internal "bumpers" to limit the down travel of the coach or the suspension. I don't believe the shocks are exposed to the weight of the bus in the minimum length position.