Air Suspension problems

[land864]

Question for a co-worker driving a 2001 P38, with 160,000 kms up.

Not my area of LR Expertise:D

" During the last 3 weeks the air susp has taken up to 5 mins to get to ride height and ride is harsh until then.
Issue is not constant , ie ; it happens intermittently. Okay sometimes.
Today on freeway at 100kmh and in freeway mode for 5 mins , air susp alarm activated and advised 'Slow to 55kmh '
No effect on ride quality was noticed.
Alarm stayed up until ignition off.
No restart since"

I told him I thought it was more than likely a hole in a susp air spring/bag.

Your thoughts ?

Approx repair cost?

Alternative suppliers?

Based in Melb

Pete G

[wayneg]

As the car is pushing 10 years old I would get him on the forum to do a bit of research. If he or she can hold a spanner most of the servicing of the system can be done quite easily. I would suggest renew valve block seals, compressor seal and air springs. The air springs have a date stamped on them and will show how old they are, they might look ok but become porous where they fold and can leak from the o-ring where the air tube enters. Try a little water and detergent sprayed on them to see if it shows any leaks. The block and compressor seals should cost no more than A$100 and a few hours work. The springs are available in different flavours so can be quite pricey. They are easy to change with limited tools and a jack. Also get the eas software and lead to reset everything, again cheap.
The fault could be caused by any of the above so take your pick.

[adm333]

The erratic behaviour and hard fault message means it is probably not far off giving an actual hard fault.

This is where the EAS drops the car down to the bump stops and won't do anything until the fault has been cleared.

Does he have a bypass system at all ? If so he should consider switching to it until the real fault is addressed.

[land864]

adm333 . By that , do you mean a Faultmate such as golidlox girl described in her intro piece?

[PaulP38a]

adm333 . By that , do you mean a Faultmate such as golidlox girl described in her intro piece?

EAS Bypas kit like this allows you to manually inflate the EAS using a compressor/servo tyre inflator.
https://www.aulro.com/afvb/
Available from Hard Range EAS Emergency Bypass Kit | Hard Range Australia (http://www.hardrange.com/node/22) or do a search on eBay for other suppliers.

FaultMate MSV-2 is for reading/clearing faults and tweaking settings on Range Rovers and other Landies.
http://hardrange.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/product_full/DSV225-1_13.jpg
Available from Hard Range DSV225 - FaultMate MSV-2 EXTREME Full Kit for Range Rover P38 | Hard Range Australia (http://www.hardrange.com/node/68), Black Box Solutions (manufacturer) and others.

BTW: Goldilox Girl got her FaultMate from me and Andy (Hard Range).

Cheers, Paul.

[goldiloxgirl]

Hi Paul, the Faultmate is brilliant...wished I had invested in one years ago. I've already saved the price through not getting EAS fixes from the Pirates of P38's. Wished I had bought my emergency bypass kit from you as well instead of having Ned Kelly's Cousin in Sydney install it. It does the job nicely though.

Kind regards,

Lani

[PaulP38a]

Thank you for the kind words Lani. Andy and I really appreciate getting positive feedback from our customers/mates. That's pretty amazing your payback on the FaultMate is only a few months... I usually work off 12-18 months worth of workshop visits at $80-100 a visit to plug in to their Testbook plus whatever else they make up, ummm, diagnose ;)

For Pete's mate problem in this thread though, the cheapest way to diagnose and clear EAS faults is with Storey Wilson's excellent (and free) EASunlock Suite plus the OBDII to Serial cable you can make yourself for less than $40.

Pete - did your mate get his EAS issue sorted?

Cheers, Paul.