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We fiddled around with the airbags' pressure and found that about 10 psi with the rear swaybar set in the middle position from the previous full stiff setting without the airbags was pretty good for everyday fast unladen driving. With this setup the truck is actually pretty close to neutral with only slight easy to control understeer at the limit. This was a big improvement over the tons of grinding understeer and heavy body roll of the stock truck. At 10 psi the ride is not perceptibly negatively impacted at all. If anything you can go over big dips even faster than before because the rear end doesn't slam through the travel as easily. If we were going to be really serious, we would probably have the rear bar full stiff with the air but the truck will rotate like this and we don't want a big and tall 4×4 truck to be set up this way!
At more than 10 psi with the back of the truck unloaded the ride would start to get a little stiff and bouncy in the rear. The back of the truck would start to really raise up which would reduce the front caster and make the truck tend to wander on the freeway. We don't recommend going much higher than 10 psi in the rear for suspension tuning. For towing yes, for truck handling tuning no!
With a big reduction of body roll from the Hellwig rear swaybar and the Sequoia front bar coupled with an increase in rear spring rate from the air springs and an increase in compression damping from adjusting the King shocks the truck's handling has been transformed. The cornering is amazingly flat and with the big 20″ 295 tires, a lot of rubber is on the ground and there is a surprising amount of cornering grip. This truck can out handle some sports cars! It is especially comical considering this is a huge slightly lifted 4X4 truck on Nitto offroad tires!
The Auburn gear limited slip diff also helps reduce understeer by actually letting you throttle steer slightly and greatly improving out of turn grip. The truck will actually drift but we are scared to really hang it out because it is a high 4X4 and we are worried it might feel awesome right up to the moment it flips!
The interference of the truck's electronic nannies to drving fun is way, way less now. The truck's stability control, traction control and electronic limited slip now only come on when you are driving at about 8/10ths so they are now really acting like safety devices instead of super annoying hindrances that wear out the brakes really fast like before.
In addition to improving handling, the truck is now level when towing making things feel much more secure. Handling while towing is so much better. The truck is stable, doesn't bottom easily and doesn't drag the trailer jack ever, even when towing a big enclosed trailer.
The only drawback is now our truck is so fun to drive, it makes us drive it even faster wasting gas. The sensation is pretty weird, a huge super fast truck that corners and brakes well to boot. It's sort of like going fast on your living room couch or something. It makes you grin ear to ear. The fact that it also goes off road is even weirder. Maybe we should enter it in a rally.
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