We so love to make fun of curb feelers, graphics on vans, and rubber band tires, but why are we so willing to think that all vehicles need to be bagged and laid low? I personally dont like the look on anything but 50's boxes and fat fendered customs. I can just hear the future rodders saying " Why did some dipshit feel compelled to bag this car back in 2008?" and his buddy will reply .. "Oh, they bagged the shit out of EVERYTHING back then"
I personally think (please this is my opinion) that this is a useless fad. Its all about the lookatme attention issue. I think it is very untraditional, and if you can't do a good job of statically lowering a car to where you can drive it the way you have it lowered than you should quit. Bags are for groceries..not Hot Rods
I like curb feelers but, I like lowriders too, and airbags look great on lowriders in my opinion. To each his own I guess.
low 'n slow...to me that says lead-sled....and thats where that look ought to stay...IMHO...bagged or no bagged. low slung model A coupes that drag their asses almost on the ground ....well...I'm keeping that one to mahseff as i dont wanna hurt somebodys feelings outa respect for them.
I was all for bagging my caddy until last year I went to a car show and saw one of those boyd wannabes' sitting on the ground and something was wrong with it and it would not raise(leak in the line somewhere). He was pretty much fucked, too low to get a jack under it and too low to drive as it was right on the ground. After a while a pretty good sized crowd gathered and most were laughing and pointing at the $50,000+ custom that was immobile. I did not stick around long enough to see how it panned out but heard that they had to drag it onto a flatbed scraping the front end and pushing the bumper into the grill. I am going to stick to other options!
I feel the same way about bad chops (even though I really like a nicely chopped sled). There are a lot of nice cars that made it through the last 60 or 70 years that won't survive the Old Skool Rodzzzz era.
When I built my `40 Chevy rag in the late eighties I made what I call a custom rod, it had a rake. I'm changing it to a full fifty's custom. I order for it to sit like I want I'm going to have to bag the rear. To get it to set like I want and not use bags I would have to take the body off and C the frame. The car has fifty thousand miles on a frame off build so I don't think I need to go that far this time. I have a coupe I need to get built before I end up in the nursing home so bagging the rear will save me some time and give me to look I'm after. When it's aired out the skirts will leave about one inch of the Caddy cap showing.
they are cheap and efficent... that what most people are looking for, in abilene kansas- its hard as hell to manuver around all these jack-wobbled streets with a low staticly dropped vehicle... if i had it my way all my cars would have bags... trendy or not... IMO
It is interesting to read this thread and others lately on the HAMB. The end of the fad of the broken low may be on the horizon. Just when I finally bought a set of airbags for a future project. My projects get finished slow enough that it will probably be back in style by the time I get it finished. I too am a closet hater for the super low Model A's and such. As I already mentioned, they look broken. And with customs, I want to view the car when it is parked the way it is going to look as it is cruising down the highway. Bagged on the frame cars are for the lawn chair crowd at the good guy events. Fits in with cry baby dolls and fake bullet holes. Now I will go work on something. I think I pissed off enough people here. Neal
IMHO.... If it has fenders, you can't get a car too low. A highboy, or lowboy, just looks broken laid out on bags though. JH
Well, I like the bagged look on customs---on fenderless rods it's just plain stupid. As for static drop, I live in the mountains on a gravel road, and where it meets the pavement (or rather, climbs up to the pavement) some modern stock-height cars scrape, so ANY lowering would have to utilize bags or hydros anyway, or you'd have to park on the side of the road and hike 1/2 mile home.
If properly set up, a leak in 1 line won't cripple the thing. with the right valves, the other 3 wheels could at least pick it up enough to get to the problem, or a jack under the thing. $50,000 just doesn't buy what it used to I guess.
From a suspension engineering point of view there is only one optimum setting or 'sweet spot' when the geometry is dead nuts correct. How are you going to hit that 'sweet spot' when you are constantly pumping these things up and down? Unless you have a memory programmed RCU - Ride Control Unit - you're not. So basically your suspension geometry is fucked up better than 99.9% of the time. The only application for air bags should be as helper or load levelers. Ride is another consideration. I know many people who have taken air bags off after they discovered that airbags are basically like basket balls - they bounce. And then there is the issue of punctures - I have seen more than a few bagged vehicles stranded with a punctured bag or two. A few years back after an air bag popped one guy had to have his car flat bedded 300 miles from Paso (Robles - not Maria) to LA - when he got back, after having paid the $$$ bill he had the airbags removed and has never regretted it. Is it a fad? Remember jacked up cars in the '70s with extended shackles ? - another moronic idea.... I have said it before, but it bears saying again: stupidity is not cool and getting maimed or killed or doing the same to others is even less cool. Air bags belong in Congress - not on hot rods.
quoted for truth! I like the look of frame-laying customs. Not hot rods though, that just looks terrible. I don't think I'll be bagging any of my cars, as driving a car thats 2" off the ground isn't feasable in Canada (terrible roads) so I'll just lower them to pre-lowrider hights
Bagged Model As are the worst. I like bags on quite a few cars. What I don't like the the need to have the frame touch the ground. it is rediculous and useless. Plus in my opinion at the point the frame is on the ground it doesn't look sleek or lowered, it looks broken.
As long as you do things like bags without majorly f-ing up the original car beyond repair, I say go with it. If you cut out enough shit or screw it up enough where you can't put it back to original with a little work then I'd say be careful. I have a chopped shoebox and I was buying in to the airbag thing. I bought the whole set-up and everything then one day I realized I didn't want to go that route. Although I'm going to pretty low and might scrap a little bit here and there, I don't want to blow out a bag on the freeway. My scrubline will be bad enough as is, lol. I was also going to clip the front end with a mustangII but realized that there are companies like jamco that make products that work with the stock frame and IFS.
My car sits at about the stock curb heighth.......for all the driving I do it just seems to work better than when I had it alot lower......besides, it looks fairly stock anyway except for my RED WHEELS.
I've read numerous articles about vintage customs pointing out that lower is better, but there was a perceived barrier of just how low they could make them because in their static state they were unable to go in certain driveways, back out onto the street, go over speed bumps etc. Maybe airbags aren't traditional (god lets not beat this dead horse anymore) but is it a stretch of the imagination to think all those custom pioneers would poo-poo air ride technologies "back in the day" if they could push the low, lower, lowest envelope?
There are certain vehicles that air bags work on and fenderless is not one of them. We airbag cars in our shop. We also lift cars for large size wheels. We also lower late model chryslers and others with spring modification kits. We get some stupid request sometimes but the customer is always right. If thats what he wants and it is safe then thats what he gets! Thanks, BOBBY FORD
There's a kid in my neighborhood that has an F-1 and it gets driven around with the ass dragging on the ground just like the finest mini trucks, hahahaaaa! Bags have their place (mostly at old folks homes and grocery stores), but for the most part, they are way over used. Adjustable suspension is for kids that don't understand what and how important a good stance is. Oh well, some all new and utterly ridiculous fad will reign supreme tomorrow!
See if this is traditional: My highschool car was lowered with cut springs til the front crossmember would roll a pop bottle, it was dechromed, and had a louvered hood. And I had curb feelers behind the front wheelwells. None of the other kids in town "got it". But, this was 1984 and the car was a 1967 Chevelle. I thought I was cool. Still do.
bags on hot rods....i can take em or leave em. on a custom, it's like the dipshit yesterday who asked about hopping up engines. a sleds gotta be low, period. like a few others have said, some of us live in locations where STOCK vehicles will bump n grind, forget driving a slammed static dropped car. i live in a town built on the foothills of a mountain, i've lived in 3 houses in this town, and every one had a driveway that i'd have to scrape to get in with the majority of my cars. airbags are a necessity here to me like an ice scraper is a necessity in minnesota. as for the look, i don't much care for most of the cars that are stock bodied and slammed, just too cartoonish for my tastes. they should be part of the total package of the look of the car. i do it to get the look i want and be driveable. that doesn't mean i lay it out to park and jack it up like a fuckin DONK to drive like many do. anybody who knows me will tell you my car is never higher than in absolutely necessary to navigate the road without at least a little scraping. it only gets aired up to clear obstacles. these things are reliable, the technology came from the trucking industry! semis log hundreds of thousands of miles on "unreliable" airbags. the failures are overwhelmingly due to poor installation and abuse of the bags. people simply fail to follow the most basic of rules, let NOTHING touch the bag, and be very careful where you run your lines. do that and you eliminate 90% of failures. others don't pay attention to the limits of the bags, when you start hopping, or running extremely high pressures, failures will result, don't do that! and yes, laying frame can be very dangerous in the event of a tire/bag failure, that's why i put a lot of thought into my setups, my cars can sit on the ground and not damage anything, nothing is lower than the frame rails, and most importantly, it's built to only lay out in the rear, the front can't/won't touch the ground, only the rear half of the car can, so in the event of a serious failure on the highway, i can still maintain control of my car because i can still steer. on the road your repair kit should include an extra bag, a few hose splices and a length of hose, and your tank should be plumbed with a schrader fitting too in case your compressor shits the bed. bottom line, you gotta put a little effort into the install, most don't, so the bags get the bad rap instead of the dipshits who can't install them properly. i drive bagged cars daily, and have had zero failures.
alot of hatred fer bags here! personally I like the look of a car sitting low on bags. They are conveiniant for going over speed bumps and rail road tracks without ripping off your exhaust, turning corners without buckling your fenders or tearing your tires to pieces. Pulling into driveways without destroying your bumpers. As far as bad ride like a basketball, popping bags, blowing out air lines....that is all due to an improper installation from a hack or rookie. I have never actually seen a bag pop...alot get torn from the installer not paying attention to clearance and the bag will rub and get sliced or torn. Same goes with air lines, if you use common sence when running the lines they will be fine. Stay away from heat, sharp edges or just run steel braided lines. Ride...put in shocks or spend a few bucks on a quality bag like slam specialties....it is very possible to get as good as or way better than stock ride. As mentioned above, a single blown out airline shouldnt keep you from lifting on a good setup. It was probably a cheap manual 2 way valve setup and actually one kept one end from lifting (front or rear). Or the installer was dumb enough to run regular air line from compressor to tank and melted the line, in return drained the air tank. Ok my fingers hurt...enough of my "pro air ride jibberish". Everyone has their own opinion on style and equipment and thats just the way it will always be.
Whatever it takes to put it on the ground is ok with me ... my cars are always drivers so I slam it as far as possible and go with it - never used bags myself - i like to drag race. There are scrapes on my driveway and I'm fine with it.
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