Also while its possible you are stuck in jacking mode having done all the replacements - I assume you had the battery connected throughout - I have not had mine "STUCK" in jacking mode, but I have had it sit ridiculously high in back, low in front after working with it jacked up. All that I ever needed to get it into normal mode has been start engine, put in gear, and move the car a little (less than one wheel revolution).

But what you describe could be resolved by getting someone with SDD to connect to the car and either run the height calibration or perhaps there is a compressor cycle option. Is there anyone near you that has SDD to connect and take a look? This would also alert you to any codes being generated. Assuming nothing was damaged, is it possible you have a plug connection somewhere or a height sensor that got bumped or damaged during the work?

Finally: are you getting any falure messages besides "Car too low" and/or "Ais Susp. Fault"? - If you DON'T have Air Suspension fault, there's you problem. The system doesn't know it has an issue. (Kidding, sort of...) - can you intentionally "break" it by disconnecting one strut? Then "Fix" it by reconnecting it while its running...


Just thoughts....

 

OK guys thanks for all your help. I really appreciate it. Im gonna try all the above as a last resort but have just ordered the coil over conversion , to be honest even if I can get this all to work I may even just throw the conversion kit on and get rid of the problem once and for all.
I can see the same problems coming back when the NY winters hit .

The good thing about all this is that we have another great bunch of suggestions that may well help other owners of these wonderfull but quirky cars.

As an aside I forced the compressor earlier and it did kick in, but nothing on the bags............

 

ok , that was a long day.......but we now have progress.......I managed to get hold of a guy who lives in my town who fixes Lotuses and Aston Martins.......

He came round earlier and this is what he did.......

He first put his snap on reader and started pushing buttons.

Compressor came on briefly and went off.

He did that a few times and the compressor would come on, run for a few seconds and put off.

But the car started to rise up.......

We eventually got the car to be sitting nice, much nicer than it was before.

Now we had a " air suspension fault " thing come up.

He looked at it and tried to clear it but it kept coming back with some data stuff and would not clear the fault.

He thinks that something in the ECU may need to be programmed on his bigger computer test machine back at his shop so he is gonna check that.

Hopefully now that is the only issue so some time this week I have to pop round his shop and get that done, he is also gonna set up the alignment and all that good stuff and do the inspection thing.........

So guys fingers crossed I am making some progress here.........took car out for a run tonight to see if it would clear the fault but it didnt........

Once again thanks to everyone who helped out with this

 

ok........eventually got everything fixed.......took a while.

After clearing all the codes my mechanic contacted Jaguar and got a reflash from them.

They rebooted the computer and everything started working.

Guy found that the rhs air height adjuster was installed upside down, guy who had car before me was the one who probably did that, he also installed the compressor wrong and replaced an old Bilstein with an arnott.....so I had three bilsteins and one arnot........I don't think they work together.He probably jerry rigged the ecu to make the suspension work........sort of.Then when I came along and replaced everything it all went pear shaped.

Car obviously needed an alignment, guy had issues with that because rear toe adjuster links were shot............

So anyway, that's all done, gotta do the 50 miles thing to get the inspection done..........

Im wondering if it might be an idea for this site to put all the air suspension issues in one spot.......there seems to be a lot of hit and miss advise which could help, but having everything on one page might be a good idea.......the suspension does seem to be a ball buster on our cars.........as can be seen from my thread and others, not all faults are the same and neither are all the remedies.

Once again guys, thanks for all the help and hopefully that advise may help others.

Now I gotta spend two days cleaning the car, getting rid of the awful home on the range reversing song and adding something a little bit more.......errrr....aggressive........and finding out why my intermittent wipers only go half way...........minor problems....lol.....



Thanks guys/.......

 

Haha, the guy before or his mechanic was obviously a moron!

 

HAHA.....probably just being cheap, he had had the car from the get go, first as a lease then he bought it. Had it serviced at Jag dealer and as it got to the 150000 mile stage he made the mistake of continuing to go back to Jag. And I think those prices scared him, $1700 for one strut from them at the time, and thats before they get their grubby hands on the car. So he had a friend who was a mechanic jerry rig it. Hense the , probably sourced from breakers yard, Arnott replacement shock. There were a few other things that were dodgy. One that is intriguing me is on the front bumper. In the middle part just behind the license plate is a jubilee clip. Just sitting there doing nothing other than hang onto the grille. Ive left it there for the moment because its not doing any harm and leaving it might help me figure out what it was there for in the first place.......
Been running around for the last few days , and everything works........when these cars work correctly we understand why we love them.New brakes, control arms, suspension parts and a full alignment.........oh Lordy.
Now I gotta spend the next few days cleaning it and putting everything back together........
Then......I gotta fix those few little niggly things that were all put off due to me deciding that it would be a great idea to spend a weekend fixing my suspension issues.....yea right...! Oh its sunny out................haha

 

air suspension light came on , and then car to low,
I changed out the compressor
when I start the car it will raise up and will drive fine for approximately 3 miles then the air suspension error comes on and it starts riding like there are no shocks.
when i park it,it drops way back down , especially on the passenger front , if I grab the passenger front fender and lift I hear a lot of air releasing.
I have jacked up passenger side to see if it would reset , but no change, I have driven for more than 30 min and still no reset.
any help is deeply appreciated

 

Leaking somewhere, good chance your front air shocks are in need of attention.

 

Sounds like you have a leak somewhere , and the fave is the strut itself.Although if other corners are also dropping that would have me looking elsewhere. Its actually a good idea to go to the sticky threads section and read the post on there that explains how the system works. Knowing how it works helps when trying to find where the fault is.
I read a post on here where someone suggested that you could disconnect the airlines or the power to the strut and that can sometimes point to which one is not working.

This system is a nightmare and its fitted on a few cars , but when its working perfectly its great.........I was pretty much a flies left nut away of junking the whole system and throwing on a set of coil overs.......the struts were ordered delivered and were sitting in my living room..........if the mechanic hadn't figured out what was wrong than that was the next step........rip it all out and throw in coil overs.

Good luck buddy, there's plenty of posts on here about the strut issues.......you will get it done in the end......lol

 

thanks
I appreciate your input

 

replaced right front shock, solved the problem!

 

This is exactly why I bit the bullet and made the switch to coil overs for about the cost of one shock tower plus labor.
I miss the adaptive shocks/springs when i encounter a rough patch of pavement or a fast sweeping curve but all in all it was a decent swap that I would do again.
Car is a 2008 XJ VDP.