Load-leveling suspension system upgrades for towing?

Dear Station Wagon fans,

I'm hoping to get my trusty 1965 Buick Special equipped to tow a reasonably heavy load like a smaller Airstream travel trailer. It turns out that the muffler shop that will install the dual-exhaust can also provide me with a custom receiver hitch that could be as beefy as 10,000 pounds. While that's obviously unreasonable, I might want to be able to tow something as heavy as 5000 pounds.

The shop that will be doing my drivetrain swap, Orinda Motors, has recommended suspension air-bags to deal with this sort of weight. However, that's not the only option and I'm confused about how air bags would work with a tow load.

The first time the family ever considered upgrading my wagon for towing, all that was available were air-adjustable load-leveling shocks. These are still available as shown by this example from Monroe:

http://www.monroe.com/products/Max-Air/Shock-Absorbers

However, I've only found adjustable shock absorbers for the rear of my wagon.

There is basically an equivalent system in an suspension air-bag arrangement for my wagon from Air Lift:

http://shop.airliftcompany.com/dyn_search?k=0&q=60750

They also sell an on-board compressor system so that you can adjust your suspension without lugging an external compressor:

http://shop.airliftcompany.com/dyn_search?k=0&q=72000

However, Air Lift only sell air bags for the rear in the case of my wagon (it's discrimination - I tell ya'!) Air Lift sells systems for all 4-wheels for pick-up trucks and SUVs. Also, another company sells a 4-wheel system for my trusty wagon:

http://www.airbagit.com/Air-Suspension-kits-all-4-wheels-p/fbs-bui-40-kit3.htm

When my Dad and I first looked into this stuff about 1980, he told me that modern receiver hitches generate a loading moment to move some of the weight from the rear of the car to the front. If that's correct, then any load leveling solution that only involves the rear-wheels isn't good enough. However, I've never understood how this works - is this correct?

Can some of you wagon towing types explain to me you've equipped your wagon's suspension to deal with a heavy trailer? Can you get away with just air-adjustable load-leveling shocks in the rear and drive comfortably? Is there a size of trailer where you need to start worrying about adjustable load-leveling for the front of the car?

Wagon towing wisdom solicited!!

Cheers, Edouard

 

only the rear drops so you only need it on the rear. does your car use the same susupension as an impala or belair? is the rear coils or leafs? had the rear load leveling on my expedition and it was a great vehicle for towing

 

Having had a 65 Chevelle 2-dr wagon, I'm well aware of overloading the rear, but not so much towing.
At one time I picked-up and delivered engines, heads, etc. from a speed shop and brought them back to a machine shop, sometimes up to 2500 lbs. at a time. 30 miles one-way, mostly tollway.
I used Gabriel High Jackers, and had no problems, but I used to jack it up by the trailer hitch before filling it with air.
Make sure your brakes are up to it, as that's all you got!

 

PM CS54 and ask him what he did with his 54 Country Squire. I did the same thing with the Safari and it made a ton of difference - improved towing capability big time. Stabilized the whole set up and is also a nice option when not towing.

I can't remember off hand what it was we did, airbag assists with remote control, but he'll remember what we used.

Rev could also provide you with options.

For 29 years I used Monroe air shocks and they were not bad but when I did the swap over to the air bag set up, replicating what CS54 did the year prior, it was like night and day.

 

If you have coil springs, I would look at the CargoCoil variable rate springs from Moog. They also come with a life time warranty. Then use a load-equalizing hitch with the torsion bars on the tongue. They work very well, and are a nice, simply mechanical system that does not put extra stress on things like your shock mounts. With the trailer towing package, my 89 Grand Marquis was rated for 6,000 pounds of trailer from the factory, and that was with the heavy duty, single rate steel springs. It was rated for 750 pounds of tongue weight that way too, but did recommend the weight equalizing system for tongue weights over 500 pounds, although that was not required for safety. It was for the extra margin, only. I did find that if I put much over 1,000 pounds of cargo in the trunk, the back end did sag, but not enough to have a serious effect on the handling. The factory load leveling system made no difference to the recommendations for towing, either. The owner's manual still suggested the weight distributing system, but with specific procedures for pre-loading the system.

 

Thanks for the advice (Re: suspension system upgrades)

Dear 59 Wagon Man, 65 2 Dr, Safari57, MikeT1961, and station wagon adventurers,

Thanks for the helpful comments. I had some confusions that I finally straightened out for myself. I had never understood how a load leveling equalizer hitch works. There is a nice article explaining the concept on HowStuffWorks:

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/auto-...itches/towing-weight-distribution-systems.htm

So the answer to my question really boils down to size of trailer I want to tow. If it is small enough that a load equalizer hitch isn't necessary, then probably suspension air-bags are unnecessary overkill. However, if I get greedy . . . . . . . .

Alas, Gabriel makes only air adjustable shocks for rear once more. So this won't work for a load-equalizing hitch so I go that extreme.

Just sent the PM, I'll be interested to learn what he did!

Alas, Moog doesn't appear to make springs like that for my wagon. The car does have coil springs though.

Clearly this is the way to go if the trailer is heavy enough to warrant the extra effort.

I think that I'm at the point where at least I have some idea of what my options are. It will really depend on what trailer I end up with and I'm still very uncertain what I want. So I'll probably put this decision off for now.

The only think that makes the issue vaguely tempting is the other benefits of pneumatic suspensions. There is an article on the Hot-rod website that is interesting:

http://www.hotrod.com/howto/hrdp_0701_air_suspension/viewall.html

Oh well, time for me to do some more research and see if I can make up my mind on the tow ballpark I want to be in.

Thanks again!

Cheers, Edouard

 

My 92 Crown Vic had the load leveling suspension option as part of the original owner's vain attempt to build their own towing package. I HATED the thing. The thing I really disliked most was being in a long sweeping turn and having the system actively trying to level the car on me. I prefer a car takes a set and stays that way. Changing the lean changes the loading on the tires, and affects the line enough that it can be a pain in the butt. It can also be an expensive, and troublesome system to fix should something break. My boss's wife just had the load leveling removed from her GMC Envoy, since it was going to be over $1,500 to try to fix the system IF it was not the body computer causing the problems. I'll take a simple mechanical system any day of the week.

 

Aftermarket systems only have presets.

Hi Michael and Station Wagon Lovers,

Well, I don't know why, but that's all I've found in the aftermarket air-bag suspension systems. The fanciest systems have a remote and you can store pressure settings for frequently used configurations.

That does sound appealing to me. If you have a travel trailer, you spend the time to find the pressure settings that work best, then set a preset. To tow, pick one preset. When you disconnect the trailer, switch to the no-trailer preset and soon your car ready to just cruise without the trailer.

Cheers, Edouard

 

I just put a pair of Monroe Load Levelers on the front of my Catalina, and have a pair of Monroe Air Shocks for the rear.

The simplest solution is always the best. Some people tend to overthink many things; or, alternatively have too much money to blow on expensive solutions that only bring bragging rights without exceeding the simple solution.

 

Can't seem to get front load-equalizing shocks ????

Dear OldFox and Station Wagon lovers,

*Sniff*, that is exactly what my original plan was.

That is how my Dad proposed to equip the car back around 1980 and it seemed as good a scheme today.

However, I cannot even find heavy-duty shocks for my car!! :confused:

This has got me increasingly concerned. I'm putting in an engine that weighs 40% more than the original. Heavier springs will help with the gravitational weight. However, I would expect larger shocks would be at least desirable because of the larger inertial mass.

I just checked again. You cannot get anything more than passenger-grade standard front shocks for even a 1965 El Camino with the big-block engine.

Huh?!?!?! Something is really wrong around here!

Any smart ways out of this puzzle would be greatly appreciated!!

Cheers, Edouard

 

Your air shocks are here.....Monroe MaxAir. Be sure to order the line kit.
You might also be able to find your front shocks from the selections. Your springs carry the added weight of your engine....the shocks only dampen the up and down movement. A good gas shock should suffice.

http://www.oreillyauto.com/site/c/s...year=1965&make=Buick&model=Special&vi=1501340

 

http://coilsprings.com/classic.aspx

Very knowledgeable tek and they will custom build to your spec.

 

I would think the modern gas shocks for the El Camino would work very nicely on the wagon. After all, the trucklet has more weight carrying capability than the wagon, and with the big block that was factory available, they will be calibrated for the weight of the big block engine in that chassis.

 

If the new engine weighs 40% more than the original you're going to need something.
Seems like an awful lot? No aluminum stuff on that baby??
That added weight will probably make it push like a dump truck going around corners.

If you're interested in air supension Have you looked into the Shockwave air spring-shock combo?
They combine an air spring and shock and are adjustable, need to swap out the lower control arm for the fronts, otherwise they bolt up like shocks.
And they do sell them for your car.
They also have front coil-over shock systems, not too familiar with those.
I wouldn't want a coil spring in front and a coil-over myself, that's just a band-aid for a weak spring and that's pure M. Mouse in my book.

http://www.ridetech.com/store/shockwaves/

 

Load-equalizing hitches and heavy loads! (Re: Load-leveling suspension)

Dear OldFox, mugzilla, MikeT1961, BlueVista, and assertive station wagon fans,

I was writing up an explanation of how a load-leveling hitch works on V-8 Buick forum when I realized - I completely misunderstood how they work. Here is my new explanation and with it I think you'll understand my problem better:

As before, I'm basing this explanation on this HowStuffWorks web-article:

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/auto-...itches/towing-weight-distribution-systems.htm

Here is a picture of a load-equalizing hitch from the same article:



If you look carefully, this "hitch" is a steel rig that goes into the receiver tube and then provides a trailer ball that is vertically offset from a pair of steel torsion arms. Those torsion arms are then twisted upward by the chains attached to the trailer tongue arms. Because the car frame is rigid and so is the trailer frame, the torsion bars act like a bow lifting the two frames upward. The trailer ball itself becomes the fulcrum. That moves the weight of the tongue toward the car's front wheels and the trailers wheels. At the same time, the torsion bars insure that enough downward force is applied on the trailer ball for stability.

With this technique, your front wheels carry some of the trailer tongue weight. Depending on how much torque you apply, you can transfer a lot of weight forward. That could be important especially if you want to tow something as heavy (or heavier) than the car itself.

To put that problem in context, my station wagon weighs about 4000 lbs. The goal is tow a travel trailer with some reasonable home accommodations. The smallest trailer that I'm aware of is something like the t@b:

http://tab-rv.com/

These have a gross vehicle weight of already 3000 lbs. That's 75% of the car.

What feels more appealing would be something like a vintage version of the Airstream Sport (formerly Bambi: )

http://www.airstream.com/travel-trailers/sport/

These are somewhere between 3500-4000 lbs. So that's a lot of weight to put behind a midsized car.

So the whole reason I'm continuing this thread is to see if there really are any viable alternatives to the air-bag suspension systems designed for specifically for towing. In particular, I'm worried that the car's stability requires putting enough additional weight on the front to keep the braking stable.

So, on to the comments.

Alas, I've gone this route. The Monroe MaxAirs only help if you don't use a load-equalizing hitch. Without a load-equalizing hitch, the largest trailer my wagon could handle is probably less then 3000 lbs.

Actually the springs handle gravitational weight and inertial mass. The trouble is that a shock absorber is there for a reason. Heavier springs without a matched shock means your front end will bounce more than intended. That will reduce the stability and handling of the car. Given the power of the engine, that is definitely not desirable.

I just checked again, at least Monroe doesn't have a different shock for the big-block El Camino compared to the small block V-8. Yup, this really surprises me. I found the same thing for the 1965 Buick Gran Sport and it's Nailhead big-block. I have some leads from my post on V-8 Buick on some "heavier-duty" shocks, but *shucks* it bothers me to not be able to get shocks specifically designed for my application when the muscle car versions of my car should have also needed beefier shocks. I don't get it.:confused:

Well, actually you need to compare the two engines to understand the difference. The original Buick 300 cid was a very light engine to begin with ~ 400 lbs. An all iron big-block Buick is around 650 lbs. So that would be over 60% heavier. My engine has aluminum heads and intake manifold. That puts it somewhere in the 550 lbs. category. Since when the original engine was so light that works out to: 38% to be more precise.

I just discovered these and was looking into them. That might be a useful compromise. Thanks for the suggestion!

Sorry for being long-winded. Certainly appreciate any additional advice folks might have!

Cheers, Edouard