removing F350 auxiliary springs temporarily?

[MIDNIGHT RIDER]

You could retrofit the air-ride cab-mounts from a big truck in place of the almost solid standard rubber cab-mounts.


I doubt there is enough head-room in a standard light-truck cab to accomodate a genuine air-ride seat.

 

[LCAM-01XA]

Can you post some pics of your air-ride driver's seat. Also the thing about shocks is that they are valved to match the leaf packs, so given the truck's rather stiff leaf packs the factory shocks have a rather heavy valving, which makes for a rough ride. Have you driven a light-duty halfton truck on those nasty roads? You may be able to match its ride with the leaf packs changes I mentioned, but you'll have to use halfton shocks as well cause if you don't the rear axle will end up overdamped and will have a tendency to "skip" over washboard-type surface.

 

[pybyr]

Can you post some pics of your air-ride driver's seat. Also the thing about shocks is that they are valved to match the leaf packs, so given the truck's rather stiff leaf packs the factory shocks have a rather heavy valving, which makes for a rough ride. Have you driven a light-duty halfton truck on those nasty roads? You may be able to match its ride with the leaf packs changes I mentioned, but you'll have to use halfton shocks as well cause if you don't the rear axle will end up overdamped and will have a tendency to "skip" over washboard-type surface.

I've driven all sorts of vehicles on these same road surfaces, one of the only things that doesn't end up bucking all over is a 2009 Dodge Ram with the coil/link rear. My 350 is nice and stable, which is more than many vehicles under the conditions, I'd just like to take the edge off the bigger pavement heaves and craters.

 

[J D Recovery]

I run an airbag setup on my wheel lift tow truck and when empty it rides ok and you can adjust the air from the cab (can be fun to play with)

 

[pybyr]

Can you post some pics of your air-ride driver's seat.

My camera and computer aren't getting along well at the moment, but it's basically an older version of this Bostrom seat pictured here, except that it has a spring suspension instead of air:

http://www.bostromseating.com/products/t905.htm

Also the thing about shocks is that they are valved to match the leaf packs, so given the truck's rather stiff leaf packs the factory shocks have a rather heavy valving, which makes for a rough ride. Have you driven a light-duty halfton truck on those nasty roads? You may be able to match its ride with the leaf packs changes I mentioned, but you'll have to use halfton shocks as well cause if you don't the rear axle will end up overdamped and will have a tendency to "skip" over washboard-type surface.

Thanks for the suggestion, but if I'd have to dig deep into the rear suspension, I'd rather do something that'll preserve the payload capacity for situations when it might be handy. My original thought on removing the auxiliary springs was that it might be simple & low/ no cost but take the edge off of the ride. Glad I asked here and learned that doing something useful isn't that simple.

 

[pybyr]

Got to thinking about trying to re-mount the passengers' bench seat (it's sort of a 60 to the driver's seat's 40) on something like these (below)- doing an air bag suspension on the truck is too complex/ expensive for me for now, but what about doing an air bag suspension on/under the existing passengers' seat (I can easily modify the pass. seat under frame to gain the clearance):

http://www.reidsupply.com/Detail.aspx?itm=SLM-1

 

[LCAM-01XA]

The potential issue I see with using these mounts is they would allow the seat to sway side to side as you take tight corners, and under heavy braking it may have the tendency to slide forward some - you'll need to build some sort of scissor linkage to prevent all that, sort of how your driver's seat is now...