[HO455]

I have been living with air leaks since I got the WMB on the road. My hope was that the leaks would get worse and thus easier to locate. Which to a certain extent has worked out. The rear bags work just fine and will stay up for days. The fronts however leak down in about 4 hours. Which wasn't unbearable, but now the tank has started leaking down at the same basic rate.
I backed the truck up to the garage and connected the shop compressor to the truck's air tank and bumped everything up to 150 psi and dove underneath with my bottle of leak check. After an hour the only thing I came up with is that it seemed like air was leaking past the check valve and out the compressor intake. So I dashed down the hill to Grainger and got a new check valve. Installing that caused to the swivel fitting next to the original check valve to get all loose and start leaking. So I pulled that off and used a bolt, punch and a vise to hold the bolt so I could smack the punch and get the swivel to quit leaking. The downside of smashing the center together tighter is it doesn't swivel very well anymore, but seems to hold the air in. (See picture 1. Vice not shown). Now things are looking pretty good there. (Photo 2)
But none of this has anything to do with the front end dropping. It donned on me that the only place I had not checked for leaks were the new guages I had installed. Since I had ordered a set of guage angle adapters awhile back it decided to install those and to swap the guages to see if the problem followed the guage. I didn't get photos of the adapter installation but it was pretty straightforward. I just had to cut the back hold down straps to different lengths and grind out some clearance for the light bulb holders. The directions were not much help in that they only addressed setting up the adapter at 90 degree locations (like north south east west) where I wanted them halfway between east and south. (I hope that makes sense) (Photo #3 before & #4 after. Photo #5 is the guage angle set from Auto Meter). So guages swapped, and the tank aired up it's time for lunch and some sanding on the bookcases I'm building to keep peace in the house. 3 hours later I walk out to check things out and even before I get to the truck I can tell the rear bags are down. Sure enough the rears have bled down 20 psi. All this time it has been a leaking guage. I had discounted the guage as the problem as it was #1 new and #2 I didn't think both sides of the guage would be leaking (dual needle guages) down. I called Air Lift hopefully for some kind of warranty help. After a short conversation about the leaking since installed and why it took so long to figure out the guage was bad they said no problem and they would ship me a replacement guage. Hooray!
It also appears that the check valve has stopped the air tank from bleeding down. So things have improved here today. When the new guage arrives I will post some photos on the guage hold down straps.