Tundra Air Bags (1 Viewer)

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Location
Northfield, Vermont
Put bags on my Tundra a while ago, just getting around to posting it here

Went with the firestones with just a simple air line out the back. No onboard pump at this time. f2445 kit. Install was easy peasy. I did have to cut off the factory bumpstop. I run 8 lbs empty and 25 towing my trailer.

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I have the same setup on mine. Works great. I don't find the need for onboard air. I have a leftover new in box arb small compressor that came with a kit I've thought about installing and wiring up. But it's pretty fast and easy to just use a bike pump or shop air.

It does make it a bit tricky to estimate the load though. I pulled my enclosed trailer and had the bed full of stuff last summer and it felt kinda heavy. I think I was really front heavy on the trailer too. So I ran through a cat scale. Iirc I was at 4,850 lbs on the rear axle of the tundra. Without the bags I probably would be on the bump stops. It handled it great for 500 miles in the mountains.

I find that my little oem Bilstein rear shocks are not enough though for the weight it'll handle with the airbags on three really rough highways with things like frost heaves.


Put bags on my Tundra a while ago, just getting around to posting it here

Went with the firestones with just a simple air line out the back. No onboard pump at this time. f2445 kit. Install was easy peasy. I did have to cut off the factory bumpstop. I run 8 lbs empty and 25 towing my trailer.

1656642066774-png.550606



1656642159803-png.550608


1656642211254-png.550609


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It does make it a bit tricky to estimate the load though. I pulled my enclosed trailer and had the bed full of stuff last summer and it felt kinda heavy. I think I was really front heavy on the trailer too. So I ran through a cat scale. Iirc I was at 4,850 lbs on the rear axle of the tundra. Without the bags I probably would be on the bump stops.

4850 is a ton (well, 2+ tons lol) of weight! Would have been HARD into the bumps without the bags for sure.
 
4850 is a ton (well, 2+ tons lol) of weight! Would have been HARD into the bumps without the bags for sure.

Yeah. For sure. I just pulled up the scale ticket on my phone. I was 3380 front, 4640 rear on the truck. Plus 5980 on the trailer axles. I'm not sure how precise those scales are at that weight range. But I think they're close enough. It was less than I remembered. But still a lot of weight on the rear end and the truck in general. Airbags worked great. Good enough that I really couldn't tell other than the overall load felt heavy under acceleration and braking. I hit the scale at the end of the trip just out of curiosity. I was expecting to see 7-8k lbs on the trailer and less on the truck. I think that works out to be about 2300lbs of load and tongue weight.

The airbags are a must-have for using my tundra for towing an hauling. The truck is just a bit under sprung. But it's a lot more capable than the light spring rates it comes with allow it to be.
 
Not sure what year both of your trucks are (after more than 10 years here I’d think you’d have that in your sigs :flipoff2:), but my ‘19 feels more like a light 3/4 ton than a half ton. I’m used to a 1 ton diesel and this truck is very capable. I’m running Timbrens now (it’s what I could get at the time) but have bags to go in at some point. I keep a Viair portable compressor in the truck and used it to fill bags for the past 15 years.
 
LOL! off to update my sig now!

Mines a 19 too. Coming from a superduty, I like the Tundra better across the board except the soft rear suspension.

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Attaboy:hillbilly:

I had a Cummins 3500 and briefly tried a Silverado LTZ 2500HD (gawd awful piece of crap) before getting the Tundra. I drove a 2022 1500 as well and man, it felt half as capable as the Tundra. Squirrelly handling too.
 
I agree completely about the feel. The Tundra feels heavy like a 3/4 ton to me. I had a powerstoke F250 immediately prior to this truck. It was a 2007. I'd say that the turbo diesel power was better in the mountains - when it was running. It's hard to beat the low rpm power output from a diesel. But it broke down. A LOT. It was a 6.0. I'm not sure there's anything more to say. I sold it after only 1 year, and actually made a few thousand on it including multiple break downs and repairs. The truck it feels similar to from the driver's seat to me was our 2001 GM HD2500 with the 8.1/Allison combo. I'm surprised no one has ever made a turbo kit for the 5.7. A low pressure turbo kit would be preferable to me over a supercharger.

Component wise - it's pretty comparable to my F250. Tundra has bigger brakes, same size rear axle, same size transfer case and pretty comparable transmissions. Interestingly the Tundra front unit bearing is bigger than an F250. So it makes senses that they'd be pretty similar in weight and feel driving.

The main complaints I have about mine - it's a 2016 Limited crewmax 4x4 5.7 - is that the integrated brake controller is terrible. The brake modulation is all or nothing. I can't set it up to give me consistent braking. And I've tried on multiple trailers that have good working brakes. I use a Curt Echo that I already had now instead. It works great. I really wish the back seat folded better. The rear seat in my GM crew cab was more useable. And the crewmax doesn't let you access behind the rear seats to store tools. Toyota could have done a lot better in that respect for under seat storage as well. I also liked that my F250 didn't have any tint on the windows. And it would be nice to have a 6.5 foot bed with a crewmax cab. I need the crewmax to fit child safety seats in the back. But the bed is pretty small on the crewmax.

I put a few thousand miles on a Ram 1500 recently with a 5.7. I have to admit that the interior and ride was significantly better on the highway. I can't speak to the longevity, and obviously I didn't buy one when I could have, but it was a pretty decent truck for cruising on the highway with a trailer. I think the 8 speed transmission was really good at keeping the engine in the sweet spot up the mountains and the engine and road noise isolation was like driving a Lexus. And I got about 11mpg towing the same size trailer I get more like 8 in the Tundra.
 
I agree 100% on the rear seats. Some lost opportunities for under seat storage etc. The 2022 Ram 1500 I drove was a “Classic” model, and felt super loose and sketchy at speed. Maybe the “newer” version is better?
 
The ram I drove was a 2020 or 21 1500 Limited I think. It only had about 15k miles on it. So it was nearly new. It was a rental truck I used for a long camping trip from Utah through northern Montana and back down. I was borrowing my in-law's 26 foot trailer. I didn't have a truck at the time and didn't want to use my 4Runner to pull that big of a camper that far. So I rented a truck to pull it and that's what I ended up with just by random selection of the rental agency. I'm not really one for renting like that, but it worked out.

You can feel it when you drive that the RAM is built lightly. For example the truck has uncovered seat tracks that will be exposed to and fill up with dirt and dust, the wiring harness under the seats is not contained in a loom, it's just a rat's next of wires under there. That kind of stuff. My biggest user frustrations were - it was the small crew cab and it's too small for kids seats. The only way it fit was because we only had 1 kid at the time and the child safety seat can fit in the middle of the rear seat and extend between the front two seats. Otherwise I could not physically get into the front seat if it was far enough forward for the child safety seat behind it. So that cab config wouldn't be a viable option for me. The other issue i had was that the dial shifter was really frustrating backing up a camper. If you open the window or the door to look out down the side - the truck will shift on its own from R to Park and put on the parking brake. So trying to back up into a campground parking spot where I'm trying to move around to see out - anytime your butt takes too much weight off the seat it shifts to park and you have to stop and shift back into R and start again. That got real old real fast.

The outward visibility in the Ram was good though. I also think the gen 2 tundra is pretty good. But, the F250 was better. The extending OEM mirrors were pretty awesome. They're HUGE double mirrors and the door cutout to drop them down is really nice. Ford did a great job with that design.

The new 22+ tundra visibility is disappointing. If you haven't driven one - they raised the window belt line about 3 inches above the 2nd gen and visibility is markedly worse. The rear window of the 22+ tundra is almost entirely blocked by the rear seat headrests. I had a 22 tundra at the dealer after selling my F250 and went down to the dealer with the intention of buying it. I thought the test drive would be more of a formality than anything. But after about a 20 minute drive I went back and drove a 2nd gen and after back to back drives I decided that the 22 just wasn't good enough for $70k. It's a lot of little things like paint, panel fit, interior fit and finish that turned me off. But mostly it was the cabin design. It's a few inches smaller inside the new crewmax and the visibility is a lot worse. The bed is slightly smaller. But the truck got 5 inches longer. Ride was not meaningfully different from the older truck IMO. The coil rear is fine, but I don't think you could tell from the driver's seat if you didn't know. I thought the new powertrain was quite nice. Very quiet. Powerful. Isolated. It really feels like diesel power, but no noise, no vibrations, and it doesn't feel quick, but never feels strained at all. I think it'll be really good towing. I'll probably come around eventually and end up buying one, but it could have been really good if they had chosen more utility over styling.
 
The Ram I looked at was a crew cab. My brother has a quad and it’s good for groceries and a gear bag, but that’s about it. I have him looking at Tundras now as his Ram is an ‘11 and it’s time to get something newer.

My understanding is that the ‘22+ Tundras aren’t getting any better fuel economy than the 5.7, and require premium fuel? If this is true, the only thing I would trade my ‘19 for is a lower mile ‘21.
 
The mpg reports I've seen are disappointing. And it seems like they're all over the map too. TFL has IMO the best real world testing. And they saw test loops in some new tundras as high as 24mpg. And then some as low as 16ish highway mpg. That's a huge variation between two similar trucks. Towing the Tundra mpg was as good as any for a gas engine. Probably a 10% improvement over a V8.

Towing back to back a full size truck on a flatbed the Tundra did 11.7 mpg while the Eco boost was 8.7. That result is 35% improvement. But it doesn't seem to be consistent.

New tundra is still spec for 87 octane. So that's a plus. I'd guess it has quite a bit of headroom to tune for higher power if it can be tuned. It's kinda wild to me that it can handle 87 octane despite 10.5 compression and 15lb of boost.

I would really love to try towing and empty mpg back to back between them. In fairness the driving experience is nicer in a few ways. Power in the mid range is significantly higher. NVH is improved - especially cabin noise is really improved. But I still feel like it's what should have been out in 2017 and we should be seeing the next generation improvements now. And the hybrid needs a 5-10kwh lithium battery so it can regen a gallon worth of energy on a downhill and save a gallon on each up hill. That would result in major fuel economy bump in the mountains. But the little battery pack it has doesn't do much.
 
I must be old since my only retort to discussion of hybrids is: “ There’s no replacement for displacement!”
 
It's the age of AD - Artificial Displacement. For the low low price of only $4,524.59, you to can add a turbo to your v6 - but if you buy now, you can have 2 turbos for only $9,049.18! And you'll have a v6 with v8 power! But wait - there's more - for only $3500 more you can have 1 more mpg! haha.

Seriously though - the V35A has a lot going for the underlying design. It's basically a diesel architecture on the bottom end. So it should handle a LOT of power. But JFC Toyota made it expensive, complex, and very hard to work on. $4,524.59 is list price for a single turbo assembly. A 3UR short block is about $5,700. I hope those turbos last a long time!
 
I had the same bags on my 2014 DC.

Keep a close eye on them... Yours appear to be the offset ones

Look at them from the back and see if they are sitting square to the spring, or offset a couple inches.

Mine were offset and i bent the hell out of both brackets and had to custom fab a fix.

Just an FYI
 
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