Gday guys. Having a spot of bother with the old girl, a 1995 SE with high comp 4.6 fitted. We took a trip to the Mallee and beyond during the recent long weekend to take in the silo art, and a wander through Murray Sunset National Park and then on to the SA Border Track.
Car was going great until really the first decent size dune on the Border Track when it popped a rear airbag. Managed to lift it up and get the wheel off for a good look and sure enough the bag had come away from the plastic base and was swinging freely.
Worst though was that the plastic base had been torn from the steel diff mount and the pin was bent at 90 degrees. So a somewhat massive recovery ensued as we were over 700 kms from home, putting a damper on the weekend. Up on the hoist Tuesday morning and managed to straighten the pin enough to get the base off which had a massive hole torn in it.
I had an old airbag on the shelf so swapped out the base onto my semi fresh bag in the car and got air into it. Took a lot of mucking around but I finally got it up to height and then had to reset all of the heights as the car had a substantial droop on the drivers side.
A day later and still having issues. Last night I parked it away in normal height mode and this morning it was down on drivers side. Took it for a drive and it came up and wasn’t too bad. Tried going to high mode and it struggled and was 40mm lower on drivers side. Yet I had calibrated standard and raised heights yesterday.
The more odd issue is that even at standard heights the RR airbag doesn’t seem to be sitting right. It’s leaning like they do when on full droop. There is no apparent damage under the car, the mount for the airbag looks perfect, yet it wont sit evenly on the bag base. Is this likely to be one of those things that settle over time and then do a re-calibrate of the heights or has anybody here found similar issues.
I’ve recently removed a set of old Koni shocks and replaced with Terrafirma TS125/126 and I’ll be comparing the open and closed lengths of those today against the Konis. But they are the ‘standard’ height Terrafirmas, not the extended as used with the Arnotts bags.
I’d really like to understand why it blew in the first place. This car has been into some nasty 4wd situations over the years and I’ve never had an issue like this. I’ve needed to replace bags due to age and wear, but when the old girl lets you down, I really need to understand why, fix the issue and move on with the confidence that it wont let me down again.
Rob Hayden
Lilydale, Victoria
1995 4.0 SE P38
2003 L322 Vogue
1992 4.0 Supercharged Active Suspension Soarer
1988 Ferrari Testarossa
1955 Buick Riviera Coupe
1972 DeTomaso Pantera
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