levellers

[Pete-B]

 

Hi, Because my AS Warwick XL is so nose down, would it be possible to fit levellers on just the front end?

[Keithl]

What kind of levellers were you thinking of?

 

Keith.

[Pete-B]

 

Hydraulic, I had a full set of E&P levellers fitted to my last van but they only come in a set of four.

[Keithl]

Try calling round dealers and ask if fronts only are available. Question would be how do you control them if no hydraulics on rear for computer to control as well?

 

Have you seen the recent article on OAL https://www.outandaboutlive.co.uk/motorhomes/news/goldschmitt-launches-new-supsension-upgrade-kits-for-motorhomes

 

Keith.

[steveandlisa]

Have a look at the "Milenco Qautro Huge levellers" there what i use and offer plenty of height.

Steve.

[Derek Uzzell]

Pete

 

I vaguely recall replacement front-suspension struts being available for Ducato/Boxer vehicles that woud raise the ride-height at the front and level a nose-down motorhome’s original stance, but I don’t what effect that would have on the handling.

 

The norm for motohomes is for a manual/automatic levelling system to have four ‘legs’ - two at the front and two at the back. However, 2-leg systems are available for caravans (example here)

 

https://www.rhinoinstalls.co.uk/E-P-Hydraulics-Caravan-Compact-Level-System

 

and it MIGHT be practicable to adapt such a system to the front of a motorhome.

 

(If you want a levelling system, I believe you should opt for the 4-legs type you had before and discard your 2-legs-at-front idea.)

[Brian Kirby]

Autosleepers advertise the Warwick XL as being sold, as standard, with a "Top Drive", semi-air, rear only, suspension system. There is nothing in the Warwick's layout that suggests it may be susceptible to being loaded front heavy (causing the front end to "squat"), and the inclusion of the rear air suspension as standard rather suggests that Autosleepers anticipate droopy rear, rather than front, ends.

 

The Top Drive systems seems to be Fiat factory fit, and are apparently made in Italy. They come in a variety of combinations (for a variety of vehicles), apparently with manual or automatic inflation. It seems they can also be adjusted to compensate for left/right eccentric loads, although the stated objective of the systems is to restore the height of the laden van to its normal unladen height..

 

I therefor think it might be wise to contact Autosleepers to find out which version they have fitted to your Warwick, and whether you should have a separate manual for the air suspension - as it seems to me should be the case.

 

If you have no manual, I would suggest you get one, as a noticeably nose down stance could as easily be due to an over-inflated set of rear air bellows having caused the rear end to rise. This might indicate that the system on your van was incorrectly set up initially or, if an automatic system, that a control fault or setting is causing it to run at maximum pressure irrespective of the vehicle's resulting nose down/tail up stance.

 

If the cause is at the rear, trying to modify the front end to match might result in some very strange handling characteristics indeed!

[Derek Uzzell]

Auto-Sleepers used to fit as standard to their panel-van conversions manually-adjustable AL-KO Air Top rear-suspension air bellows, but have now standardised on Top Drive equivalents.

 

As Brian has said, if the Top Drive bellows are inflated to an unnecessarily high pressure, the vehicle will end up well tail-high (or well nose-down if that description is preferred).

[Pete-B]

Thanks for all the replies and suggestions, I do indeed have the adjustable Alko semi-air fitted on the back end which I keep at about the half way mark on the dials and find this gives a good balance between comfort and ride support.

 

For example, and for reasons I won't go into now, I have to park the van on my drive, nose in and that's the lowest part, albeight by not too much, but it does mean in order to get the Thetford fridge to work, I have to run up on ramps a real pain!

 

SAP in Doncaster who fitted the EP levellers on my last van say they could fit different springs on the front but this would only lift it by about 40mm. But maybe, doing this and then dropping the rear suspension altogether when parked could perhaps be enough to be honest I just don't know!

[Brian Kirby]

From what I read, to get to the appropriate pressures, one first parks unladen on level ground, then lets all air from the system so that the springs are taking the full weight of the van (or, if there is a minimum pressure for the bellows, reduce to that) and measures, and notes, the distance from ground to the bottom edge of the rear bumper at its centre. Then, when the van is fully laden, (ideally on the same piece of level ground) one repeats the exercise but now sets the air pressure for the bellows to whatever value returns the van to the same rear bumper height as when unladen. Unless the rear of the van is heavily laden, the pressure required is likely to be quite low, but is a matter of trial and error to establish the correct pressure.

 

If the van then rides badly, or becomes less stable, one adds or subtracts pressure (subject to any stated limits) until satisfied.

 

Motorhomes are inevitably heavier than the average van, even when unladen, because of all the installed furniture etc, so tend to head for their maximum permissible weight quite quickly, often loading the rear axle to its maximum before they reach their maximum permitted laden weight. This can lead to a distinctly nose up (or tail down :-)) stance, and it seems to be this tendency that Autosleepers are trying to counter with the semi-air at the rear. I think I'd be inclined to eliminate any possible over-inflation of the rear bellows before looking to get the front raised.

 

This may necessitate tweaking the pressures when entering your drive, but if the rear is high it will cause the front to drop, so any reduction in the rear end height should result in improved ground clearance under the front bumper. You may then need to vary the pressures when parked on your drive from those appropriate for normal use.

[Pete-B]

 

Thanks for that Brian, when I next get the van from storage I will give your instructions a try.

[Derek Uzzell]

This link ist to a short video on the manually-adjusted AL-KO system fitted to Auto-Sleepers PVCs

 

 

An option might be to add a 12V compressor to the ‘semi-air’ system that would allow the air-pressure in the bellows to be adjusted by the driver from within the cab, and a compressor kit evidently began to be marketed in 2014.

 

https://www.caravan-salon.com/cgi-bin/md_caravan/lib/pub/tt.cgi?oid=2154&lang=2&ticket=g_u_e_s_t

 

After the appropriate bellows-pressure had been established using Brian’s suggested method (and the pressure-gauge settings recorded), when the motorhome was parked on the drive the bellows could be deflated allowing the vehicle’s rear end to lower. Then, before the motorhome was driven, the bellows coud be quickly reinflated to raise the vehicle’s rear end back to the desired height.

 

However, if Pete’s Warwick is so nose-down when parked on the drive that its Thetford fridge won’t operate properly unless the vehicle’s is driven up ramps under the front wheels, I doubt that playing about with the Air Top bellows’ pressure would reduce the nose-down stance enough to change that.

 

What is needed is a pair of ‘legs’ at the front that can lift the motorhome’s nose high in the air so that the fridge is sufficiently level to work - and 2-legs-only systems seemingly (and understandably) are not marketed for motorhomes.

[chas]

I find it a terrible burden to have to slip my jumbo ramps under the offending wheels. :D

[Deneb]

I have seen a few AS vans on the road with visibly ridiculous rear ride height, presumably due to over-inflation of the semi-air suspension. The bellows only need to be inflated sufficiently to restore the original unladen ride height. For panel vans, that is easy to determine, as Fiat publish the figures. Coach-built vans are another matter, as they have custom rear bodies.

 

For PVCs, the "natural" rear ride height, measured from the ground to the load floor at the bottom of the rear doors, should be 545mm for a van on the light chassis, and 555-560mm for the heavy chassis - the higher figure (an extra 5mm) applies to the 6.36m van.

 

I have Dunlop semi-air rear suspension on my PVC, for improved ride comfort and stability, rather than to counter heavy loads, and find it only needs inflating to 15-20 psi. I would be surprised if any Ducato or other Sevel PVC plated at 3500kgs MGW needed rear semi-air suspension to be inflated much more than that, unless it was grossly overladen, although different "air-ride" systems with varying airbag volumes may require slight variation to those pressures. Coachbuilt vans are a different matter, as the longer rear overhang and type of suspension may require greater inflation pressures.

 

But for a PVC on a standard Sevel van body, the rear ride heights above are a baseline to aim for and should obviate any great difficulties with levelling when parked.

[Derek Uzzell]

Presumably the 545mm ride-height figure relates to vehicles with 15"-diameter wheels?

[Deneb]

Derek Uzzell - 2021-08-29 10:58 AM

 

Presumably the 545mm ride-height figure relates to vehicles with 15"-diameter wheels?

 

I suspect that is likely, as the document I took those figures from pre-dates the optional fitment of 16 inch wheels to light chassis vans. I don't know if Fiat fit modified suspension to light vans ordered with 16 inch wheels, although I doubt it. But the difference in stated standard ride height between light and heavy vans is only 10-15mm, yet the diameter of a 16 inch wheel with a 225/75R16 tyre is I believe about 55mm greater than that of a 15-inch wheel and 215/70R15 tyre, so a 16-inch wheel and 225/75R16 tyre should raise the ride height by nearly 30mm, all else being equal.

 

But I doubt 15mm or so is of much concern when setting the ride height. When I see some AS vans running around with a 5-6 inch gap between the tyre and wheelarch though...

 

And I know I'm mixing metric and imperial measurements :-)

[Pete-B]

 

My van did come with 16" wheels

[Deneb]

Pete-B - 2021-08-29 3:30 PM

 

My van did come with 16" wheels

 

Judging by the image on Autosleeper's website, the XL is a 6.36m van on the heavy chassis, so it would always have had 16 inch wheels as standard. In which case the 560mm ride height to the load floor at the bottom of the rear doors is the correct figure.

 

If a light chassis van was fitted with optional 16 inch wheels, it raises both axles uniformly by the additional radius of the larger wheel and tyre combination, so would make no difference to the original attitude of the van. The only difference when calculating the rear ride height would be to add about 27mm to the published figure to take account of the different wheels.

 

Can you adjust the air bellows pressure to achieve a suitable ride height whilst maintaining at least the minimum operating pressure for the system? Nearly all cars and vans will have a slight nose-down attitude by design, partly to accommodate loading to their maximum design weights, but also to improve handling and steering. I wouldn't have thought you would need a great deal of pressure in the system on a PVC. "Half way mark on the dials" doesn't really tell us a lot about what pressure you are running at, and the range displayed on the dials may exceed the maximum design pressure of the system anyway. Your gauges may well have a different dial and range to mine, but half way around the gauge dials on my system equates to 50 psi, which would be two and a half to three times the pressure I run at, and would raise the rear of the van by several inches.

[Pete-B]

 

Next time I get the van home I will try reducing the pressure.