The first I heard of Bagyard air ride was in an email sent to me on the subject that had been forwarded to him from a certain Mr Kippen back in March, 09. It read somewhere along the lines of;
‘good god look at this amazing air ride!’
Needless to say, I had to have it and from that point on that I was well and truly hooked. Visiting the Bagyard workshop first hand on our tour of the Worthersee show out in Austria reinforced only went further to reinforce the point. It was there that I met air ride enthusiast and founder of Open Road Tuning, Andrew Marsteller who turned out to be something of an expert on the Bagyard experience.
"Austria really is producing some mind-blowing shit. Not only does Bagyard design and build cool products for air ride, they personally design the machines that produce this unique experience. Having spent ten days with the Bagyard crew at Wörthersee in 2009, it’s no surprise why they love going to work every day.”
Having met Open Road’s Andrew on out trip, I decided to deal with him during the process of ordering up my kit. I opted for the ’Supreme Series’ struts. These are a totally one off item boasting custom finish paint [I went for glitter green] and colour coded anodized parts throughout. The icing on the cake being shortened Bilstein dampening. A quick phone call to Andrew was all that was needed to process the order with an EasyStreet management package taking care of controlling everything.
The day finally came when a large box arrived at my house, first with the management and second containing the 4 shocks. It’s important to remember that running a car on air ride is not all ways a simple case of bolting bits on and flicking a couple of switches. Granted, some have that magic touch but I was determined to get the car sitting 100% pretty and in order to do so there were first a few things I needed to check off my list.
The first came in the form of a drip to the phirm where Tim worked his magic notching the Mk3’s chassis leg. To say that Tim is a perfectionist when it comes to his work would be an understatement, the guys a genius. I eventually left their shop with a factory fresh notch that looked as if it had been cut on the production line.
Next on the list was the boot build. Building the frame in-situ made it possible to get it sitting nice and tight. With the frame built I set about fitting the components of the management system. First the tank, then the manifolds, compressor, ECU and wiring harness.
Installing the Bagyard struts is no harder than fitting any other suspension. If you’ve fitted a set of coils then your half way there in fact it was the easiest part of the build for me. Once in, the push fittings made connecting up the air lines a split second task
So what’s it like. Well, having seen – though admittedly not owned- an analogue kit, id say that the digital stuff has the edge for me. Pre set ride heights, digital displays and in some versions, auto levelling are the stand out advantages. The air ride subject is a fascinating one and brings out a truly interesting debate
Having come from a static background there is arguably no feeling comparable to that of setting up a car to the millimetre on a set of coils and driving it on a daily basis but equally, fitting an air ride kit correctly, measuring your wheel offsets perfectly to get the car sitting in the rim/tyre groove, notching the chassis to get the car undrivably low and then, raising it to coilover height for driving has its appeals. Admittedly it’s not for everyone but the bagyard set up on my mk3 really is an incredible bit of kit.
; Two good Italian design
on March 29, 2010, 7:29 pm