Nashville, TN

 

My blog is going to be somewhat sporadic over the next couple of months as we are sticking around the Nashville/Knoxville area until early January.  Presently we are just outside Nashville visiting with friends.  Our friends moved here last year and my buddy has not had the time to set up his woodworking shop since the move.  All his stuff was still in boxes.  He finally had some time and asked me to help him out with building out his shop in an attached garage at their new house.  In return he helped me put suspension air bags on our truck, which is the next part of my story.

I have been going back on forth on the issue of putting air bags on the truck suspension.  With these on you inflate them to help the load when towing the trailer.  As we have a one ton truck the suspension is really sturdy to begin with so I was not sure if the need was there and did not want to incur the cost.  Recently I was talking with two other RV’ers and both of them told me how it smoothed out the ride when you get a “washboard” type road.  When you get these little bumps on a highway they get exaggerated when towing the trailer and you bounce up and down.  With that information and learning that their was a rebate on the air bags I was looking it, I went ahead with the purchase. 

Prior to the purchase I read the instruction manual online and it indicated that the installation was fairly easy with no drilling involved and probably would take about 2 hours.  They were correct in that there was no drilling but their instructions were not as clear, when we actually began the install, so a lot of time was spent in trying to figure out what they meant.  It took us about 10 hours over two days to get the air bags installed  and then another 4 hours to get the air compressor and air lines installed.  It all worked well and it passed all tests with the last one being an actual tow with the trailer.  I did attach the trailer to the truck and tried the bags with the weight of the trailer and they worked fine, I just have not driven with the trailer attached.

We are here for another week or so and then move to Knoxville for a month to celebrate Thanksgiving with our entire family, my nephew, my niece and many others, so it should be fun.  After that we come back to Nashville to celebrate Christmas with our friends.