I was looking at the instructions and since I'm only replacing one bag I wonder if I should take the angle of slamming it on the ground as my remembered position. I'm sure I'll probably need to do my reset like that even if I get the car in the air and pull the battery because I'll need to equalize the pressure between the struts to get it to level. I'll start with the instructions as its listed, but at least I know there is a manual way to reset the leveling properly afterword.

 

My thought would be to take it to a Jaguar dealer who KNOWS these cars. It could just be a defective height sensor. I wouldn't mess around chasing your tail. Spend the 125.00. They can figure it out fast as they know these cars and their issues. Then decide how to proceed. It might just be as simple as the angle sensor is out of adjustment.

 

I read quite a bit about the air suspension when mine had a problem. Also read the part on how to handle the jacking mode.

When I replaced mine together with a very competent Jag specialist we didn't do anything special. Just remove the strut and replace it with another. After replacing it I told him we might need to recalibrate the suspension.... His reply was, why did we change the height?

We took the car for a drive to workout the suspension and he was absolutely right, it wil set itself just fine without any extra work. Maybe we're making to much of this.

Guus

 

The car is 3 hours from the closest dealer. The tow would be astronomical and it definitely isn't drivable. It will be towed to family and I'll fly out and fix it as soon as I can.

As far as the suspension level, my only concern is keeping both sides even. The height sensor will work out the height and the worst I would have to do is equalize the pressure in the front bags to level the front suspension. That can be done by pulling the air lines and letting the front hit the bump stops. It will correct itself on next startup with the airlines reconnected.

 

Official decision made. Strutmasters conversion kit ordered this morning. Looking forward to getting my car back home.

 

The Air Suspension WILL FAIL eventually on every car that has them, not just Jaguars! That is the first thing to know. I just went through 16 weeks of diagnostic hell with my 2008 Jaguar XJ VDP. I would replace the R/R shock that was flat, and a week later it would blow out again, this happened to 5 replacement shocks. It became sooooooo expensive that I opted for the conversion from Arnott. After converting it, the jaguar mechanic finally figured out what the cause was, the drive shaft was in need of replacement. It had gotten twirked from a giant pot hole when I hit it at 70 mph and had no place else to go. And I can tell you, I HATE THE RIDE now. It DOESN'T ride like a jaguar, and I have owned Jaguars (5 of them) since 1989 all VDP's, and now this damn thing rides like a Ford F-150 pickup when you drive over bumps but on a smooth highway it still rides very good. If you love your Jag because of the ride, DON'T convert, but know this, if you don't convert, they will go out again if you own the car long enough. My Lincoln air suspension went out, and my brothers Range Rover's went out and I have 3 friends that have GM vehicles that have all had to replace their compressor or shocks, so it isn't because it is a JAG!


Have you asked on the forum for a referral mechanic in the area where the car is now located? Maybe call Jaguar and ask them if they have an Jag Certified mechanics listed in that area, this will save you towing and storage! 800-4-jaguar


Good Luck!
Tina

 

Tina, you do know that if / when the compressor fails most of the time it can be attributed to the ptfe sealing ring?

This is available as a kit for around £30 for Wabco compressors now from one of our members, bagpipingandy as against the £300+ for a replacement compressor.

 

What's done is done now. Parts arrive Monday. The rear air struts are still holding perfectly and the compressor airs up extremely fast. I'll part out the good components when I get the car home. The other two cars in my garage are coil suspension cars and one is the S-Type. I very much doubt I'll have complaints with the ride.

How does a drive shaft have anything to do with an air strut?

 

My drive shaft got twirked a bit when hitting a large pot hole, this caused some type of vibration when accelerating and would cause my air suspension shock's O-Ring to fail repeatedly, like 5 times in 15 weeks!


Just something for others to think about if they replace the right rear shock and then it fails again very soon as I was told the right rear is the drive/torque wheel and this is the one that will fail repeatedly if there is a problem with the drive shaft. I guess the vibration from the drive shaft allowed the shock movement which in turn caused the O-Ring in the shock to leak! I'm not a Jaguar mechanic but this is what my certified jaguar mechanic of 30+ years explained to me. This was why I had 5 shocks on the right rear fail within 15 weeks!


Tina

 

How does a drive shaft have anything to do with an air strut?[/QUOTE]


My question exactly Torrid as a drive shaft "tweaked" enough to somehow as if by magic jump over and blow a shock would vibrate so badly that 10mph would be too fast. Ant driveline displacement that bad would be easily felt immediately after it happened.

 

Well I could only feel the vibration when I would "Get Up On" the accelerator, but maybe my Jaguar mechanic "LIED" to me about what was causing the shock to go flat every night. Now maybe I should mention that when I started the car it would air back up while driving it, then overnight it would go flat again.


Like I said, I am not a jaguar mechanic, so I only know what I was told. Maybe I really did get 5 shocks in a row from Arnott that were defective.


One other note, I took the car to a different shop in the middle of all this where I have my 56 Nash Metropolitan worked on (a classic car repair shop), and they drove it before the drive shaft was replaced and could not feel the vibration except during acceleration.

 

For most owners it's true that you're at the mercy (pretty much) of your mechanics and the shop that does your work so don't take our comments personally. Some of us have more acute "bullshit detectors" due to years of accumulated knowledge and experience dealing with, working on, or otherwise dealing with automobiles including Jaguars.

A drive shaft that's out of balance enough to cause the kind of suspension oscillation sever enough to destroy a series of properly installed air shocks would be noticeable by all but the most brain dead of drivers. Probably even more true given the Jaguars always exemplary ride quality.

Imagine if you will (I know you've seen this on others cars) that you're driving down the interstate with a badly balanced rear tire. You would feel almost all but the most minimal vibration caused by the wheel & tire that was literally bouncing down the road like a basketball. You'd feel it in the seat of your pants, through the steering wheel, and if bad enough you hear it through the very parts of the car's interior that would start vibrating in some sort of macabre harmony wit the out of balance tire. There's not much question that such a situation if left unattended will eventually lead to a failure of some component be it the tire itself, the shock absorber, or some other suspension component. Would that cause a exclusive series of the failure of the air bags themselves? I guess anything is possible but it's very unlikely given that the airbags themselves still have a mechanical shock absorber inside that still has the job of controlling the suspension movement and rebound and is much more likely to suffer a mechanical failure than is the rubber structure of the air bag itself.


The air bag just replaces the mechanical coil spring of a normal coil over suspension and gives the suspension less of a harsh mechanical feel as well as being adjustable through an increase or decrease in the internal air pressure by way of car's compressor and plumbing system which can be controlled by all the sensors. Much harder to do with a fully mechanical system without spending a lot more money.

The fact that your car consistently lost pressure when sitting would indicate that there was a leak, or leaks, in the system and that in replacing so many shocks on the same corner over such a short period of time they overlooked or failed to correct the real cause which may well have been somewhere else in the plumbing or perhaps in one of the air fittings or height sensor itself. The last thing I would consider would be what appears from your posting would be a drive shaft imbalance that you were never yourself able to detect that restricted the damage it caused to just the one air bag and nothing else. Once, maybe. Twice, very odd. Five times, give me a break !!

 

To be fair, many air suspensions suffer in cold weather. You should see the threads over on VW / stance forums for people with aftermarket air ride systems that suffer in cold weather because they failed to perform necessary preventative maintenance. Not sure if the same PM can be performed on the Jaguar's air suspension system, but it's worth a look.

 

Well I'm officially done with air ride. The shop called and the conversion is done, module unplugged, and no warning lights. Now I just have to fly out and pick it up.

 

AS you know I had previously done a coil over conversion on my wife's XJ8 and I followed the instructions and told my mechanic to unplug the four leads to the module behind the rear seat backrest. I still get the warnings even after a reset and having used the JLR program to wipe all the stored data.

What did I miss?

 

Well they weren't entirely honest on that. I still have the CATS suspension fault message, but considering the clock wasn't messed with, they never disconnected the battery. I'll try that this weekend. Just got back with the car today.

 

I did the battery disconnect and it cleared the CATS warning. I'd check and make sure the mechanic did completely disconnect the suspension module.