Air Management
Air Manifold/Solenoid Valves
The Air Manifold is the working end of the Control Center allowing compressed air to enter or leave each individual air spring.
The manifold base is made out of machined aluminum and mounts to a stainless steel mounting plate. Mounted to the manifold are eight solenoid-controlled valves, one intake and one exhaust valve for each Air Spring. There are also four Pressure Sending units used to feed PSI information to the in-cab control center.
There is one main intake port, which connects to your OBA system, and one main exhaust port with has a mini muffler attached to it. There are also four ports that connect to the Air Springs. Each port is terminated with a stainless steel push-n-lock air hose connector.
All solenoid valves and pressure sending units are pre-wired and terminate in a14 pin multi-pin connector that plugs into the unbiblical cord connected to the in-cab Control Center.
Mounting the Air Manifold
Like the Control Center, it is easier to mount the Air Manifold then it is to find a place to mount it.
The two recommended locations on my Jeep where already taken, the ABS tray just below the brake boaster, and the area freed up upon removal of the stock air box.
I had to come up with an alternate location to mount the air manifold on my Jeep. I choose the under sided of the hood.
First I bolted the mounting plate on, and then attached the air manifold to the plate.
Here is a picture of the mount bolted to the underside of the hood, near the firewall and centered on the cross members.
The Air Manifold then bolts to the mount. When the hood is closed the manifold is hanging upside down. This is not an issue for this hardware, however I did add four Nylock nuts to the underside of the mounting bracket just to insure the bolts and existing Nutcerts (on the mounting plate) would not pull through.
You can see the air manifold mounted, solenoids, pressure sending units, main exhaust port, four air spring ports and the multi-connector in this picture.
On Board Air Supply
An On-Board Air supply is needed. This supply must be filter and regulated to no more the 100PSI (and capable of maintaining 30 PSI) to stay within the operating range of the Air Springs.
The On Board Air system is used to raise the air springs. Once raised it is no longer needed unless you lower the system and wish to raise it again.
The OBA System shouldn?t leak down, as the Air Manifold Solenoid Valves require 30 PSI of backpressure. My York OBA system does leak down due to a minor leak in a fitting. (I need to fix this). I eliminated the impact of this leak down by installing an $8 check valve in the airline going to the Air Manifold on Steve?s recommendation.
Here is a picture of the regulator/filter and an optional pressure sending unit which I installed to read the total PSI in my air system that is available for use in the air springs.
The regulator is mounted under the hood on the passenger side right behind the headlight as this was the only real estate I had available to me. I protected the polycarbonate bowl on the filter with a small piece of aluminum reflective tape just to try and keep radiator heat down. So far so good.
Please note, the optional pressure sending unit must be grounded or it will not send a signal to the Control Center. Being there is no terminal on the pressure sender to do this I had to come up with a way.
I used a stainless steel hose clamp. I threaded a short wire through some of the holes in the clamp and then did an ?ugly? soldering job on these wires.
The clamp was then put around the mounting nut of the pressure sending unit and tightened down. The other end of the wire was connected to a body ground directly behind the headlight.
The signal wire that comes with the optional pressure-sending unit goes to a single freestanding wire coming off of the air manifold. Basically you crimp a push on connector onto the wire from the pressure sender and plug it in. Not much room for me to screw up here.
One air hose connects the air regulator to the main intake port on the air manifold.
The SAE type air hose is ?-inch outside diameter and comes supplied with a hose cutter tool. It is very important that the hose be cut cleaning and at a 90 degree angle.
To get this cut with the supplied tool is incredibly simple. Once again, little room for me to screw up.
In my case, because my OBA system leaks down I had to tap into this hose and add that little check valve. Here?s a picture of it.
The Deluxe In-Cab Control Unit has a switch used to control the coil side of the relay controlling the OBA System (The Green wire on Control Center). I connected this wire up and now have all the air management controls in one place, on the Control Center.
Once I had the Air Manifold and In-Cab Control System installed I t6ested it to insure all was functioning as advertised. It did. Both of these sub-systems should be installed and tested prior to moving on to install the actual air springs.
Later today I will put up a few short words on the air spring installations.
Frank