A/S

[dajogejr]

Is this air suspension system a soft cushy ride or a hard firm ride? Roads in my area suck...massive pot holes, lotta expansion joints, train tracks...cracks. I feel like the a/s would be smoother in this environment but now I'm not sure. I read one reviewer who said it was "crashy" compared to coils???

Living in MI my whole life, we may have the pot hole and bad road market cornered. The orange and white road construction barrels are our state flag… LOL.

This is not the best comparison, but I’ll try anyways. I realize I’m mixing generation of trucks as well…so, with the proverbial grain of salt.
I’ve owned:
06 Big Horn, 08 Laramie, 15 Limited, 23 limited.
Latter two trucks have air ride.
My current 23 is night edition with 22” shoes.
I had lots of issues with my 15 air ride. At the dealership at least 4-5 times in the past few years.
In 2021 it needed parts that took 6-7 weeks to get. Luckily covered under max care warranty (Unlimited miles back then).
Out of pocket without the max care would’ve stung, for sure.

But…when it works, the ride is noticeably better. If you tow a trailer, it’s nice. Between a backup cam and air ride, hooking up a trailer is a one man job.

Our roads are terrible. Getting better, but still terrible. You’ll feel potholes, freeze joints, etc. But they’re dampened pretty well and as said, the truck recovers nicely. Good feel in turns, low and high speed.
If you have elderly passengers the ability to lower it down to get in is nice. Putting in Off Road 2 (Highest setting) is nice to clean under and around the wheels/wheel wells.

When it’s working, it’s the best riding half ton truck out there. Being in Metro Detroit, family and friends at the assembly side, white collar engineering side, and dealership side of all the big 3 brands, I’ve either driven or ridden in many of the new trucks in different trim packages.

I’ll continue to get air ride trucks BUT also max care warranty. I traded my 15 in at 140K miles, air ride was starting to act up again and it owed me nothing, it was time. They ride outstanding, take one for a spin.

 

[Ceri]

As others have mentioned, the obvious ability it has over other trucks is the ability to go up and down. I'm throwing a 4" lift with 35s on mine and will still be able to squeeze into my parking garage at work and slide into my 7' home garage solely because I can lower it down to aero mode. The one time I had to crawl under (so far), Step 1 was "raise it up". My mom's knocking on 70, and she likes it a lot better than my last truck because I can drop it down to entry/exit for her and it's super easy to get in.

As CalvinC said, the air suspension doesn't gyrate as much as the coil setup when you're taking a bump going around a corner. The "it's not a land yacht" comments are spot on. It handles "yawing" better than any truck suspension I've driven. I've also overloaded my bed with three pallets worth of canned food for a charity event I estimated at about 1,300 lbs. I drove it slow and never got on a highway, but the air bags kept me off the bump stops.