Hino Hendrickson Air Suspension conversion

[natsys]

Ok, so I'm sick of having everything that's stored behind the rear axle tossed around by the factory leaf spring suspension. I've contacted Hendrickson about one of their Comfort Air kits (CA-190 seems right for a 258LP) and despite the fact that they manufacture the factory air suspension for Hino, they're insisting I fill out a 4 page application with everything from engine size and brake diameter to frame dimensions and pinion angle. If they make the factory system shouldn't they have this information already?

The process calls for sending in your information, they "create" a kit (again, seems like this should be an off the shelf product for the company that makes it for Hino), provide you with a number you can give to your authorized spring shop and then they call in for pricing and give you (the customer) the installed price. I really like the truck spring shop I've used for years and they are an authorized installer. They're also likely to be more reasonable than the local Hino dealer.

Has anyone done this conversion or know anything about it? The kit is supposed to bolt right into the factory suspension mounting locations and holes so it doesn't seem to me that it should be very complicated to find out what's needed. Does Hino have any kind of a part number for this?

 

[natsys]

Update: Hendrickson came through with the Hino specs. Due to the utility body on the truck they upgraded the kit from the CA-190 to the CA-230 for additional roll stiffness. Still need an approved application, but since they have all the dimensions I don't have to crawl around under there and try and figure them out (btw, the pinion angle is 5 degrees).

I'd still be interested to hear if anyone has experience with having a conversion done, but at least I should know soon if this is a go or not.

 

[BigStickJr]

Before you get the installed price:
1) what are you willing to pay for this upgrade ?
2) what are you expecting the quote to be ?

 

[Hino123]

Hino has an older service bulletin that has step by step instructions on swapping over 23k Comfort ride suspension to 23k HD comfort ride suspension. It is bascially removing the old and installing the new. They had a few leaf spring failures on certain applications and as a retrofit installed the HD version. Warranty time paid 9 hours. At my old shop we had a customer who specked a fleet of propane units with the 23k comfort ride air suspension. He kep breaking springs and it was potentially very dangerous so we installed leaf spring suspensions on all their units. That was a PITA but is essesntally the reverse of what you want to do. Hope this helps somehow. Good luck

 

[natsys]

I honestly have no idea how much it is going to cost. What am I willing to pay? Let's just say I'm not going to put that in writing here as company reps often read forums that deal with their products. I'm cheap and I don't want to pay more than I have to, but once I get the price I'll know if it's within my reach or if I have to readjust my thinking.

Good points on the warranty work time. My shop speculated 1 1/2 to 2 days to do the conversion since there are a couple more holes to drill for shock and air bag mounting plus air line routing and possibly a dump valve to tinker with.

What part was that customer breaking? The air springs? What kind of weight was on the rear axle? My truck weighs just under 9 tons with my utility body and tools. That's almost what the rear axle is rated for alone.

Any chance the old shop still has a couple of kits they took off that they want to sell?

 

[Hino123]

Not sure on the weight, it was a standard spec propane truck on a 338 Hino. Amerigas has tons of them. Pretty sure all that stuff was shipped back for warranty or scrapped. They were breaking the air springs in the rear. Hope this helps.