Lofty Air-spirations

Getting an Education at the Air Ride Technologies Street Challenge

By John Nelson

Photography by Scott Kileen, Nick Licata, Mike Petraila, John Nelson

The first five or six invitations we received to attend this event were scaled right into the CHP round file. Airbags are for lowriders and cruisers, silly rabbit, and we want a heaping helping of handling to go with our breakfast, thank you very much.

Do 'bags provide numerous cool stances and a nice, smooth ride quality? Sure. Call it prejudice if you must, but we just didn't see air suspension as something for the performance set, those looking to carve up an open track day, a canyon road, or the local parking lot cone-bowling course, for that matter.

The Air Ride Technologies folks are a persistent lot, however, and have a fervent belief in their product. They kept at it despite our indifference, and we received a call from ART's Peggy Vernon, asking if we were going to attend. We demurred by offering that in our experience air suspension was not really a performance item. Peg had us trapped. "You're exactly the person we want to be at this event," she exclaimed, and explained the premise, something we'd never bothered to read about before consigning all those invites to the recycle pile. Once informed, we grabbed helmet, camera, and toothbrush and headed to Putnam Park Road Course in Mt. Meridien, Indiana, to try out 15 Air Ride-suspended vehicles on the 1.87-mile road course and the local roads. This is our report.

Bring Forth the Disbelievers
As it turns out, Air Ride honcho Bret Voelkel was on the hunt for Doubting Thomases such as us. He echoed some of our own statements (apparently he has heard them before) about the perception that air suspension is OK for parking lots and gives great ride quality, but doesn't provide much in the way of handling. According to Bret, Air Ride's experience and testing has shown that a properly tuned air suspension system will lower a vehicle and improve ride quality and improve its handling performance as well. With that, Bret declared, "Let's go to the track and see what happens!"

Testing consisted of braking, slalom, and open hot lap sessions. Cars were available for drives on the local lanes to demonstrate air suspension streetability, and Air Ride had two NASCAR drivers on hand, Steve Grissom and Mike McLaughlin, to provide really hot laps and professional instruction (which it turns out the author could have used, but more on that later). The big attraction for many was a '96 SS Camaro. The car was available for testing with stock suspension in the morning. During the lunch hour, the Air Ride Crew swapped the fourth-Gen over to a fully airbagged system and turned it loose again for the afternoon track sessions. We made sure to get a good taste of both.

We also got to drive and ride in several other 'bagged vehicles, and at the risk of sounding easily converted, we have to say that Air Ride proved its point. The ride quality part of the equation, as we suspected, was a given. The comfort level, on and off track, was high. It was in the handling department that we were pleasantly surprised. Unbeknownst to us, Air Ride considers issues such as ball joint travel, driveline angles, ground clearance, and turning radii in its system design. It also matches airsprings to the weight and suspension geometry of a given vehicle, and always performs live vehicle testing on new systems.

Vehicles are lowered as far as feasible, not as far as possible, and Air Ride wanted us to hold them to the same standard as traditionally suspended rides, while also considering the unique features provided by air suspension, namely variable load compensation, adjustable ride height, and ride quality. The cars we drove, several of which were way too big to be hauled around a road course, as you'll see, were very track-worthy and made the grade.

Cam-air-o
The before and after Camaro suspension swap was of intense interest. What better way to make--or break--the point in question? We'll give you two opinions here: that of Busch Series racer Steve Grissom, and ours. While dissecting his laps in the stock-suspended Camaro, Grissom told us the car kept "rolling over" and "bottoming out" in sharper turns, and that the back end would step out, forcing him to make corrections. On one long sweeper, he told us, the car had "laid over" so much (body roll) that the flat turn felt like it was off-camber. When the Camaro "laid over," as Grissom called it, he needed the entire track to get the car through the corner, and really had the wrestle with the thing to get it where he wanted it.

With the Air Ride system, the car was "much firmer," Grissom told us, allowing less body roll and preventing it from bottoming out, allowing him to carry much more speed into--and therefore out of--the corners. He could brake much harder in between without the car bottoming out. Though the Camaro still wore its stock swaybar, there was half as much body roll, which "balanced the car back out," especially in the aforementioned sweeper. Grissom told us he was able to accelerate sooner out of corners, and although he still used the whole track in certain places, he was carrying 15 more mph. Overall, he said that the car "was under better control, better balanced, and more responsive" with the Air Ride system in place. Watching Steve drive the car both before and after, we believe and value his expert opinion. Now for amateur hour ...

It turns out that the man Ro calls Rocket Johnny and others call That Damn Fool turned out to be the afternoon's entertainment. With stock suspension in place and the CHP rep behind the wheel, the SS felt loose. There seemed to be lots of slop in the car, a term Grissom also used. It felt like a wallowing hog in turns, and as if it would roll over and break the tires loose given the slightest provocation. For this amateur driver, the suspension was the speed limiter.

Cut to the Air Ride version, and things were very different. The car was tight, no slop anymore. It felt planted, much less body roll, and went where you pointed it. The tires became the speed limiter, so we, of course, promptly drove the car right off the tires ... and the track, for that matter. Luckily, it was a no-harm, no-foul affair. Never say CHP doesn't get its money's worth when turned loose on the track.

The pros saw a big improvement, and for us, a car that limited the driver was turned into a car that was limited by its driver. With that drive, and our other jaunts in 'bagged vehicles, Air Ride had proved its point, at least to this author, that air suspension can indeed be a high-performance setup. In fact, we're already cooking up a story to further explore the performance capabilities of air suspension. In the meantime, we'll go in for some professional instruction in the interests of staying on track in this endeavor.