Homebrew air ride setup
 

Hey all. ive owned my b5 for a little over two years, and now that its payed off im starting fix fix it up a little. Here she is as she sits. Volcano micah paint with black hood, roof and trunk. Its been my daily for two years, so it a little beat up, but ill fix that.
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I have a friend with a bagged volvo wagon, and after seeing his setup i had the bug. I do all my own work, and id always rather retrofit and build something unique that just bolt a kit onto anything. Id been trolling for parts for awhile and the hardest part seemed to be buying each individual piece. Seemed like a project that would nickel and dime me to death. Then i found a hell of a craigslist deal. Ended up with 4 air cylinders with endplates and brackets, two firestone air bags, a 5 gal tank, two viair compressors, a total of 8 valves, and a bunch of random pipe fittings.

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In a perfect world, id run a bag over coil in front, and a tapered sleeve in the rear. Air bags tend to ride alot better than cylinders due to the small volume of the cylinders and the rigidity of the canister. Im impatient, and ive decided to just put it together with what i have. I think i can get around the air volume issue, and i have enough hardware to get them mounted. I also picked up a spare s4 suspension and this way i dont have to sacrifice those parts. Maybe ill find a deal on some bags and ill switch over later.

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The air tank, valves, wiring and accumulators are all going under a false floor in the trunk. To mount the tank, i just removed the sound deadening and welded some m6 bolts to the trunk floor.
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Im using pvc air hose clamped to brass barb fittings under the floor, and DOT airline to the cylinders outside the car,

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Built a frame out of 1x4 and mdf to mount all the valves and wiring to. This will be covered with an mdf sheet to hide everything.

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Going to have to redesign part of this. I designed it so that the whole thing would still lift up if i needed to get to the spare tire....that doesnt work yet...lol

Coming together..

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Nice! Love seeing this kind of stuff. I'd love air ride but I can't justify the cost.

Plumbed all the valves to the accumulators and got all the wiring done.

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Im using a separate relay for front up/down and rear up/down. Eventually, id like to find an OEM tiptronic wheel with the switches on it and use those to control the valves. I was worried that those switches would be CAN-bus or something stupid and wouldnt be up to powering the valve coils. I wont have that wheel for awhile, so i just built a little switch box. Nothing fancy, just some cat-5 cable and some pushbuttons in a little enclosure.

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For cylinder mounts, i just cut the bottom bushing off some stock struts and welded em to the plates that came with my cylinders.

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I may have to clearance the wheel wheel/ unibody a little to make sure nothing rubs at full drop. I also need to pick up a spare set of the upper control arm mount/shock housing things. I need to slice them apart to make room for the cylinder to move up a little higher.

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Ive done some testing and everything appears to be wired/plumbed correctly. no major snags yet!

What are the capped PVC pipes for? The tiptronic steering wheel is a cool idea!

The air cylinders have a very small volume, and since theyre so rigid the air has no place to go when the suspension compresses. From what ive heard about using cylinders this way is that the ride is real harsh, as the small volume basically makes for a super high spring rate. The pvc pieces are just acting as small air tanks that im hoping will increase the volume of each cylinder enough to smooth the ride out a bit.

Very cool, interested to see the finished product!

Started working on mounting the front cylinders today, but im not crazy about my method. The threaded portion of the ram is a 5/8 bolt, and the upper mounts have a 12mm hole, so i just found a nut/bolt that matched each and welded them together.

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To get the right minimum/maximum drop, i need to space the cylinder body up away from the control arm. I need to just build a bracket that bolts to the bottom of the cylinder, with three mounting holes so i can switch min/max for different seasons.

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Im not in love with this setup, and i think im going to add the difference onto the ram rather than the cylinder. Im thinking ill shorten the arms underneath the cylinder, and just use some steel rod between the 5/8 nut and the 12mm bolt. Anybody see a problem with this.

Yesterday i removed one of the front struts, removed the spring and reinstalled it into the car. I mounted up one of the wheels ill be using and jacked up the control arms to see how much it would tuck. Top arms contact the inner fender before it gets low enough :(

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On the drivers side, the ball joints need to come up right where the hood support is welded, so i had to move it. Ill have to find a damper with a shorter length now, as the mount is further forward.

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Yeah.......totally looks factory...

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Props to you for having the balls to go through with this!

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