Get Air Spring Suspension and a Four Link System

Both Air Suspension and Four-Link? Here's the Scoop

By Bob Carpenter

photographer: Randy Clark

Few parts are required to make the switch to air-spring suspension. The TCI kit makes it a relatively easy swap.

First, take apart the old Mustang II front suspension to get the lower A-arm out.

Don’t forget to use a spring compressor when loosening the ball joint. Be safe.

The air spring is located on the new TCI lower A-arm with a mounting plate.

The retrofit kit is ready to bolt onto the Mustang II front suspension. The airbags are from Goodyear.

Since the air spring is not as long as the Mustang II spring, you will need to bolt on this supplied spacer.

Slide that puppy into position and bolt it up.

The kit includes new shocks. They will be located behind the lower A-arms. A new upper shock mount is included with the kit.

Here’s another view of the upper shock mount.

Here’s an important step. A bumpstop (included with the kit) must be installed to prevent the suspension from bottoming out in the event of total air loss.

Hook up the rest of the suspension, and you’re ready to run the air lines.

For the rear suspension on this F-100, we went with one of TCI’s four-link suspension systems and the air-spring retrofit kit. This is nice stuff.

The front four-link bar mounts line up with existing holes in the frame, so you can’t botch it.

The bars are attached using Grade-8 hardware.

Here we’re measuring to make sure the bars are all the correct length.

The four-link bars attach to a bracket that’s welded to the rearend. Here we’re installing the shock mount to this bracket.

The air spring will be mounted to this plate. We had to trim just a little to make it fit our 9-inch rearend correctly.

The TCI air-spring kit is supplied with a crossmember that is used as a shock mount.

The crossmember butts up against the frame boxing plate. You’ll have to make your own plate.

Here we’re attaching the air spring to the upper spring mount.

We marked the location of the air spring on the rearend.

The upper air-spring mount is welded to the frame boxing plate.

When you use a four-link system, you need to control side-to-side movement with a Panhard bar. TCI supplies this with its kit. One end attaches to the rearend with this bolt-on bracket.

The other end of the Panhard bar is attached with a bracket that’s welded to the boxing plate on the frame. Now this truck is ready for the air plumbing, and we’ll be cruising real soon.

Air springs have become a real hit in the classic truck world. The ease of ride-height adjustability and the cushy ride have led to the demand for air-spring suspension. Total Cost Involved Engineering is a leader in street-rod suspension, and the company has recognized the growth in demand for air springs. As a result, TCI has developed a retrofit kit for F-100 pickups that already have a Mustang II front suspension installed. That’s right, just because you’ve already installed a fancy suspension doesn’t mean you have to miss the air-spring boat. In addition, TCI has an air-spring rear suspension that works in harmony with the company’s four-link system. We’ll take a look at both in this article. We enlisted the aid of Hot Rods & Custom Stuff to install the kits.

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