Air Bags Replaced - 1997 U270
We had our 17-year-old air bags replaced.
We decided to replace our air bags even though they worked fine. It just seemed practical to prevent a future on-road problem. And seeing how well they looked inside indicates doom was not just around the corner.
We were surprised how easily air bags could be cut with a razor knife. And cut-out pieces show that air bags are not real thick. And even though the lower outside edge of all of the old air bags have a lot of loose rubber, the damage does not show up on the inside.
Air bags have two bottom bolts and are held down to bottom round plate with reused nuts. One top fastener is exactly the same as the bottom bolts. The other top fastener is a larger diameter hollow bolt that also has an air line attached. So 32 nuts have to be removed to replace air bags.
On our coach two of the top air line bolts can be difficult to remove because they are hard to see and located in the cramped space between the side-to-side front frame and the front bulkhead. We went the extra mile, as have others, to make large holes for easy access to air line and nut.
Our step has an OEM house battery disconnect rotary switch, with a pair of #2 cables connected to the switch, located in the cut-out space. We never used this switch, so we ran a short jumper between the bay mounted breakers on the other end of the cables, removing power from the cables. We removed step switch and moved these heavy cables out of the way.