Be Professional, Be Polite, But...

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avslash

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have a plan to **** everyone you meet.

10 years in on my 2012, which has been to hell and back, and I finally had my first air suspension failure.

I was somewhere above 13,000 feet on Kendall Mountain near Silverton, Colorado when the Rover had what sounded like a fart, then a small pop and then a persistent hiss as the suspension dropped to the stops. I limped it down to about 10,000 feet and found a level area and then broke out the contingency kit, which is 4 little quick-connect fittings with a schrader valve attached to each. Isolated each of the four struts, aired them up with my compressor and then continued to wheel for 4 more days through all manner of trails and highway runs.

The moral is to have a plan. Without a plan, I would have had a ruined trip and a pain in the ass to get home. As it was, the Rover limped along fine in it's crippled condition, ran 4 more days of trails, and then bounced 850 miles back to Texas where I could repair it at my leisure.

And for you guys that bail and install coils, I'm sorry. Short of an actual ruptured strut bag, nothing that happens out there can't be solved with a little planning. You're giving up the best feature of these rigs to avoid something that I can only find one verifiable reference of ever happening.

The failure was in the factory air line from the chassis valve block to the rear valve block, and if you ever wonder just how hot compressed air can get, take a look at how shredded this failure point is.

pop.jpg
 

ftillier

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Did that air line get moved closer to the compressor during some prior service? I know the compressor gets damned hot, too.
 

ftillier

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Is the system smart enough not to try to run the compressor, or did you pull the compressor relay to spare it while you were running your emergency kit?
 

Troy A

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have a plan to **** everyone you meet.

10 years in on my 2012, which has been to hell and back, and I finally had my first air suspension failure.

I was somewhere above 13,000 feet on Kendall Mountain near Silverton, Colorado when the Rover had what sounded like a fart, then a small pop and then a persistent hiss as the suspension dropped to the stops. I limped it down to about 10,000 feet and found a level area and then broke out the contingency kit, which is 4 little quick-connect fittings with a schrader valve attached to each. Isolated each of the four struts, aired them up with my compressor and then continued to wheel for 4 more days through all manner of trails and highway runs.

The moral is to have a plan. Without a plan, I would have had a ruined trip and a pain in the ass to get home. As it was, the Rover limped along fine in it's crippled condition, ran 4 more days of trails, and then bounced 850 miles back to Texas where I could repair it at my leisure.

And for you guys that bail and install coils, I'm sorry. Short of an actual ruptured strut bag, nothing that happens out there can't be solved with a little planning. You're giving up the best feature of these rigs to avoid something that I can only find one verifiable reference of ever happening.

The failure was in the factory air line from the chassis valve block to the rear valve block, and if you ever wonder just how hot compressed air can get, take a look at how shredded this failure point is.

View attachment 22447
Bummer!
I have so many questions.
What kit? Where does one get this kit?
What do you mean you isolated each strut? HOW?
This is like magical talk. I’d love to learn a bit more. I would have had to limp it out to a mechanic.

Also, with the title you used on this post, I thought it was going to be a dealer rant. LOL.
 

avslash

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I will post you guys a pic of the fittings later when I get home.

I bought mine from a now defunct Australian company called GOE (Green Oval Experience), but you could very easily replicate it with readily available parts. Basically you add a "loop" into the air circuit for each corner from the appropriate valve block and locate a quick-connect junction for each loop in some readily accessible area. I have the two circuits for my rear struts located in the cut-out of the rear bumper, and the two for the front coming out through the bottom of the grille near my winch.

If needed, you basically disconnect the side of the quick-connect junction that heads directly to each strut and then plug on the "emergency" fitting, which is nothing more than another quick connect fitting with a female threaded coupler on one end. In the female side you thread in a schrader valve assembly. Once that is in place you have direct access to each strut to air it up to whatever height you want. The only scenario where this procedure will not work is if you have a puncture in the actual air bag on the strut, which is very rare. You would also want to pull the two fuses for the air suspension in the under-hood fuse box to keep the compressor from running until it overheats. On mine, it is the 5th and 9th fuses on the centermost row of fuses.

A side benefit, is you can now enjoy the pretty lights on the dash board and the trucks admonitions to keep it below 30 mph. You can ignore the admonition, just break out your tape measure and use the schrader valves and your compressor to raise or lower the truck to whatever height you want by measuring from the center of each wheel hub to the wheel arch.

I "think" the air line just got old and brittle. It might have shifted around and found something to abrade itself against over the years, as it runs along the top frame rail behind the rear sway bar mount and rear upper control arm mount, but the way it shredded itself on failure, and the elevation I was at makes me think it was just a weak point in the line. The point of failure was between the sway bay mount and the upper control arm mount. Of course the factory part is on indefinite backorder, so I fabbed my own replacement line and I did sleeve the replacement with some kind of kevlarish sleeve material I found at O'reilly's just in case.
 

ryanjl

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When the suspension borked, did all four corners drop or just the rear?

I've been meaning to create my own emergency air line kit. This may motivate me to do it once the weather gets a little cooler out.

Here is another forum post about creating one:


Here is a youtube video where a guy put one in his LR3:


Here is another kit you can buy, but the cost seems pretty exorbitant considering how much it would cost to piece one together yourself:


This may explain why the Green Oval Experience is now defunct:

 

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