I have a 2005 Vanden Plas with 155k on the clock. My air suspension has been fickle of late and this past winter was awful. I am considering converting suspension over to coil springs.

Pluses/Minuses??

any thoughts will be appreciated

Joe

 

Lots of threads on this on here.

Pluses are no future worries and significant cost savings with coilovers. And you might be able to resell your air suspension parts to others that want to stay on air.

Minuses are no more active air suspennsion. Also, for me, car is a bit low and scrapes on a part of my driveway, but with air shocks, I had my indy raise it a touch to avoid this.

Probably more to it than just that. This is my opinion based on my cover conversion on my SuperV8.

Read the other threads to get other opinions.

 

THANK YOU!!!

Joe

 

The air suspension has really a nice ride when its sorted out.

The stock shocks can be rebuilt, & keep the cats part of the system intact.

Both my front shocks rebuilt cost, about $550 with shipping both ways.

The compressor can usually be rebuilt, not hard to do, & cost is minimal.

Less than conversion, for me a good solution.

 

If you decide to rebuild the compressor, I've got the rebuild kit lying around and I can send to you. I bought it to rebuild mine and then a shock went out so I bit the bullet and went coilovers.

Agree with above poster that the ride is nice with air shocks. I do feel a bit more connected with coilovers, which is to my liking. Feels more like my old Bimmer did.

 

Joe -
I have a 2005 Super V8 purchased with 134K on the clock in May 2018. Car had intermittent air suspension fault light on when I bought it. The system is wonderful when it works, but after reading a long thread by another member who went through his entire process of reasoning and trial and error before doing the coil over, and reading the NUMEROUS and continual air ride problems that plague so many cars, I decided to do the coil over. I wanted to drive the car, and mentally I would not be able to handle fixing something again and again.

I used the Eibach coils made for my model and year. The cost was 1,000 for the coils and $800 for my mechanic to put them in. They work great, provide a comfortable ride (I'd like it a bit more firm), and the car sits just right. The only negative is that they don't make the constant ride adjustment that the air shocks do, but the safety and and reliability issues are gone.

So while I wish I still had the air ride, the peace of mind I have with the coils was worth the change over. In addition, I know my car needs other routine maintenance (brakes, rotors, suspension, transmission, broken mirror fix, misc., etc) so to solve one problem for sure was crucial as I intend to keep the car till 200K.

Hope that helps.
Mike D.

 

I have BC Racing 32 way adjustable coilovers, they work for my set up. The car is low and stiff.

If I had a VDP, I'd keep the air. VDP is known for its luxurious comfort; the air ride supports that.

And yes, i paid 1100-1200 for mine, just parts. You can have yours rebuilt for around the same or less than that, as mentioned above.

You also often find people selling the struts for cheap. For example, one out of the four of mine went out when i had 72K miles on my Jag, so the other 3 struts were fine. I sold all 4 of them for $100 total just to make room in my garage. I'm sure you can get a good deal somewhere.

 

Ordered a set on Ebay the day I bought my VP a couple of years ago. Less than 500.00. I'm sure they are made in China, but lets face it these cars have little value. So why pay twice as much. Actually sold one front assy that was almost new. No it doesn't ride as good of course. The ride height on mine is actually higher. I see several returned sets on Ebay for as little as 250. Doesn't take long to spend more on the suspension than the car is worth. Just saying.