I honestly didn't think people still ordered walking beam truck suspensions. Haven't seen a heavy haul truck with anything but air ride in the last decade lol.
They probably don’t, but I am just a poor fellow that refuses to order a new truck. Honestly I would have nothing else I can go places with no inter axle lock that seems to hang most air rides and with inter axle lock and lockers I get into some places that I probably shouldn’t but no air ride truck will period. Believe it or not a buddy of mine used that yellow ford recently when his 2017 w9 was down (it’s air ride) and he claims it rides better loaded than his truck.
We still run one, and like W923 said it rides pretty good with 40K or more on the drives! Washboard roads are a ##### though regardless.
Chart your weight/psi on your tractor for every load and after a while you will be able to convert your psi to pounds within 300lbs. If the trailer has a gauge you can do the same. Just make sure you are on level ground and no wheels are in a hole.
Ag100 rides pretty smooth with 48 on the drives I found out a little while back. i haven’t rode rubber block in about 17 years and I don’t expect to go back to it either. Local outfit sets up their brand new road tractors with walking beam/ rather short daycab 900 models pulling paver trailers. I watched him airborn on the drives coming past one day while I was stopped going the other way. Oooof
I was thinking about doing the air ride over walking beam setup when I redo the w9 Does anyone know about that? I think hendrickson calls it ar2 And there’s another similar system by another company maybe called air link or something similar
I looked into and got as far as getting the specifications and approval from Hendrickson, but never went any further with it. It looked like a pretty simple installation with the exception of having to weld a bracket on the the rear end housings in order to install a track rod. It was around $8k through Fleetpride as I recall, but that was several years ago.
I agree the installation part didn’t look bad but I don’t remember needing any extra rods. It’s not a big deal if I need something else welded to the housing…that’s actually my main business but I like to play with trucks to. I think the prices I got were more in the 10-15k range about a year ago. It’s probably not worth it but it. Seems to me like the best of both worlds and I don’t want to give up the walking beam in case I get back in hauling salvage equipment. The closer I can get to the piece the better.
I believe I still have the info on my home computer. I'll try to remember to take a look when I get home.