9-27 More Upgrades for the Minnie

Installing Front Air Springs

It was a beautiful cool cloudy morning, a perfect day for Larry to begin installing the front air springs on the Minnie. Last May Larry installed rear air springs and the Minnie handles much better, probably the best it ever has, however, when we tow the car it is still really difficult to drive and he is hoping front air springs might help. When he installed the rears he installed separate air gauges for each air spring which allows him to adjust each one independently, he's going to do the same on the front air springs. The front air springs are a lot different then the back. 

Rear Air Springs

Front Air Springs

The first step was to crawl under the Minnie and unbolt the bottom of the shock absorber, then Larry had to release the coil spring. The front air springs have to be installed inside the coil springs. Before Larry could put the air spring in he had to force all of the air out of them. The air bag is plastic and it was hard to squeeze the air out, I helped Larry with this. As he squeezed the air bag I put Velcro straps around it, the object was to force the air spring into the shape of a hot dog bun. Once this was done Larry fed the air bag into the coil spring. Next he put the cap on the top and put the spring back in its place. The next step was stringing the air hose tubing, because he wants to mount the gauges a long ways away the kit only had enough tubing for one side so he only did the passenger side. When he finished doing this it was time to have lunch. 

One of  the springs the air bag had to go into

Larry squeezing the air out

Air spring inside the coil spring

The finished air spring with the cap on it

Larry putting the shock back in place

After lunch Larry pestered me about going to the gym, I gave in and said I would go, he also needed to go to The Home Depot for some more tubing for the other air spring. We had just left the house when he realized he might already have some tubing so we turned around. It only took a couple of minutes and he found some tubing that would work. We still went to town so I could workout. When he was installing the air springs he had to jack the Minnie up and a wheel feel off the jack, a clip that holds the wheel on had apparently broken, he didn't have any extra clips hanging around so he wanted to pickup a few more. We were at the gym for an hour and a half, it was tough after five days off but it was good. After my workout we walked next door to Ace Hardware and picked up the clips Larry needed. Our next stop was the UPS Store to pick up our mail, we had received an e-mail that a package was delivered this morning but the UPS Store said they didn't have a package for us. When we got home Larry called UPS and they said that the package was delivered to The UPS Store, he called them and Molly said they had a new driver that delivered their packages today and she would go to the other businesses in the strip center to see if the package might have gotten delivered to them. She called us back five minutes later and said she found it next door. 

The clips for the jack

Flo enjoying the cool weather

Before we went to town Larry put the eZVIZ camera he was playing with yesterday in the hallway. While we were at the gym whenever Flo got up and moved we would get a message and we could view the video of her moving around, this worked really well and he will be able to use the information when he writes the review on it.

In the evening we watched YouTube videos. We started to watch the third season of Transparent. There are ten episodes in the season and we watched five of them tonight. We had a very good day.