Shutoff Valve to Air Step/Stair Cover
I know a few guys have done this already but here's my spin on it. Instead of trying to replacing the Norgren valves and more importantly, my leaky piston that moves the step cover (which is a pain to do), I wanted a normally closed valve on the air supply that feeds all of that. Per Roger's suggestion, I wired it to an on/off/on switch so that I could choose between always on, only on with the ignition, or off. It was actually a pretty painful job due to all the head scratching and evolving need for different bits of hardware and ultimately took three evenings to get done.
The switch I used is actually intended to feed two different devices from one power source so I had to wire it up "backwards" which took a little bit of futzing. I did it at my work bench first and then marked my wires for when I was ready to install it, which turned out to be a good idea.
Power came from one of the two solenoids behind the kick panel at the passenger's feet. They both behave the same from what I could tell and are a little tricky to work with because there isn't much space or wire to spare. Basically the front side of these solenoids is the power from your batteries and the back side has power when the ignition is turned on. Behind this panel is also where I fed the wire to the outside. It was actually pretty difficult to find a spot I felt comfortable drilling a new hole but I eventually found a screw that FT put in that ran all the way through to the outside so used that as a guide and just drilled next to it.
The bracket is just 1 1/2" angle aluminum from Home Depot that I threw on the drill press. I used a little bit of Loctite with the bolts that hold the solenoid on and it's not going to go anywhere. I found it easiest to mount the solenoid to the bracket, screw on the new airline connectors on each end, and then mount the bracket to the chassis. Then I just cut my new airline to length and pushed it into the already attached connectors.
Parts list
- (2) 5/8" 10-32 bolts & washers for attaching solenoid to bracket
- 1.5" angle iron/aluminum (any smaller and the solenoid won't fit)
- Extra 1/4" airline. You'll need to add some to the existing line
- (1) 1/4" airline straight union connector
- (3) 1/4" airline male push connectors
- Fork spade connectors for connecting to the solenoid
- Quick splice connectors for connecting to the ignition side of the solenoid. There isn't much space to work at the actual solenoid so I had to tap into those wires further away
- Heat shrink, wire, wire connectors, conduit, etc...
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Topic: Shutoff Valve to Air Step/Stair Cover