Important Information
It’s important to note that not every car is compatible with air cups due to the bulky size of the cups and a lot of cars having space restrictions around the strut tower/coilover. If we currently have air cup kits available for your car they will be listed in the product page for your vehicle click here to find your car.
If air cups will fit your vehicle the suspension needs to be designed to work with air cups. Simply fitting air cups to a standard suspension kit will cost you 23mm of shaft travel which is quite a lot in terms of comfort, performance and handling loss. There is also a high possibility that you won’t gain the full 50mm of lift available from the air cup if the suspension can’t extend that far from ride height.
Luckily we make air cup specific suspension kits that will restore the travel lost resulting in a no-compromise setup that consists of longer shafts to compensate for travel loss and custom springs if needed so you don’t lose any height adjustment range.
If you already have our suspension and want air cups we can also rebuild your suspension kit to work with air cups.
What Are Air Cups
Air cups are an air-activated lift system that is fitted to the suspension, once activated via a button fitted inside your car a compressor or tank pushes air into the cup and raises the car up to 50mm. They are used to temporarily raise cars with clearance issues to help them over driveways and speed bumps without scraping, they are not intended to be used while driving permanently.
Air cups do not replace any suspension components and have no negative effect when fitted to suspension that is designed to work correctly with them.
Available Air Cup Kits
It’s important to note that we are the only manufacturer on the market that currently makes suspension kits designed to work correctly with air cups without compromising ride quality and performance.
Full kit with air tank
This kit is only available for cars that can use air cups in the front and rear of the car. The kit includes front and rear air cups, air tank, compressor and all wiring and air lines needed to run the kit + your chosen MCA Suspension kit designed to work with the air cups. The air tank is used to store compressed air allowing the air cups to instantly raise the car at the push of a button.
Front only air cups
Some cars can only fit air cups in the front due to space restrictions in the rear. This kit is also a viable option for anyone who only needs to raise the front of their car and don’t require a full kit. This kit includes a pair of air cups, a compressor and all air lines and wires needed to run the kit + your chosen MCA Suspension kit designed to work with the air cups in either a front only pair or a full suspension kit front and rear.
Why do Air Cups need a specially designed suspension set to work correctly?
1. REDUCES COMPRESION TRAVEL:
When fitting air cups, the way they mount is by sliding over the shaft. This immediately reduces compression travel by 23mm, which is quite a bit when you consider there might only be 40-50mm of compression travel at a slightly lowered ride height.
2. OR REDUCES EXTENSION TRAVEL:
To counter that you can wind the bottom mount up 23mm (if there’s enough room to) which will give the 23mm compression travel back, but will have removed it from extension travel. You want to keep a healthy amount of wheel droop especially in the case of air cups because that’s what you need to allow the car to raise when the air cups try and extend. For example, if you only have 30mm of extension from your ride height and the air cups try to raise the car 50mm, they’ll only reach the 30mm of extension you have available.
3. THEY NEED LONGER SHAFTS FITTED:
The only way to increase the total travel back to what it should be is for us to replace the shafts with longer shafts. We’ll then also make the appropriate bottom mount position changes.
4. BOTTOM MOUNTS MAY NEED TO BE SHORTENED:
One side effect of winding the bottom mount up to counter the added thickness of the air cups is that it reduces the height adjustment room for the spring by 23mm also. In some cases this is fine as the shocks are quite long, but in other cases with short shocks this isn’t ideal and could cause issues with achieving the height you’re after. So in these cases we also shorten the bottom mount length if possible.
5. MAY REQUIRE SHORTER SPRINGS:
The air cups themselves also reduce room for the spring by moving the top seating position further down the shock absorber from where it was originally. Sometimes this can move the top spring seating position down around 55mm. Add that to the 23mm existing reduction due to the new bottom mount position and you can see that in cases where there already isn’t a lot of room for the spring it can become near impossible, if not impossible. Where possible we can fit a shorter spring, but sometimes this will require the spring being firmer to reduce the chance of spring bind, and this is something that can be discussed at the time if needed.
