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The power is hooked up to the control valve and the pump and we are ready to go!
Everything is cleanly in place and ready to go. When running the car without a load in the back it is important to run a slight amount of pressure, like around 10 psi in the air springs. This prevents them from chafing and wearing out prematurely. 10 PSI doesn't really affect unloaded ride in a bad way.
We were eager to use our new system and boy were we impressed. We had previously loved this system in Project Tundra but the MotoIQ trailer is a much lighter open trailer and we don't have to take nearly as many spare tires, parts, tools and fuel. The Silverado hauls many more thousand pounds and puts the system to a real test.
We have towed with our system several times so far at the maximum or slightly over the maximum tow capacity and wow are we impressed! What used to be a nose high white knuckle ride is now normal. Bumps and undulations no longer bottom the rear suspension out and the truck no longer oscillates when the suspension hits bottom.
The rig is very stable even under hard braking and cornering. We had to do an emergency lane change when a semi truck cut us off and what could have been a really scary moment was uneventful.
We even got lazy and didn't hook up the load stabilization hitch once and noted that it hardly made much difference with our new suspension! Another thing is our unloaded ride is now much better, probably due to the superior Bilstein shocks. Overall, unloaded handling is much improved.
All is not perfect though, the back of our truck is working so well that the stock front end feels awful. The front suspension moves around a lot and tops out hard when the trailer hits large bumps at speed. With our big increase in rear roll stiffness the truck is on the verge of being a little tail happy when not towing a trailer. The rear is now so planted the feeling from the front is sketchy.
Stay tuned, for Part 2 we will install and evaluate a front antisway bar from Hellwig and some ride height adjustable Bilstein 5100 front shocks.
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