Well, as I’ve stated, after four days with the switch off and it riding at the proper height with no issues, and then surprisingly having it deflate, now it’s been driving at the proper height with the switch on again. Two days and it’s stayed up. Again, is this good and bad behavior symptoms of failing bags, or is it something else possibly? I did not order the bags this morning because I woke up to the car for the second day in a row at its proper height. I’m scratching my head here.
There's something missing from the equation.
The only variable time leak mode I know for the bags themselves, is if the crack is covered at a certain ride height, and not at another. The way the bags kinda fold over on themselves makes this possible. Often times a bag will look fine at a quick glance, but with the suspension dropped a bit it'll expose
very poor looking sections of the bag. Large ambient temp swings can change the ride height some but that's a stretch.
Similarly the various o-rings in the system generally leak or do not. And if it's the ones on the solenoids on top of the bags, turning the system off wouldn't help that.
There is a vent valve on the pump, but for it to be able to bleed air, the individual bag solenoids would have to open to create an air path.
So if the system is off, that one shouldn't have access to the bags air.
It's not completely unheard of, though quite rare, for the control module for the system to act up and vent or raise inappropriately.
And half the time it starts to look like that it ends up being a foul signal from the ride height potentiometer instead.
But it does happen. Though again, with the system off, that should all be out of play.
Unless it's malfunctioning in a bizarre way.
It's a simple system, but it manages to find creative ways to act up.
On the later ones at least, there is OBD access and a brief self-test, at least with Forscan.
The factory scan tools can do more with it, manually raise/lower and such.
When I got mine it had super cheap-o bags on it, and instead of monkeying around I put a new pump, bags and
solenoid valves on it. Haven't had a bit of trouble with it sense. $300 maybe all total, installed myself.
You could also convert to standard coil springs, but I'm kinda partial to the bags just on principle if nothing
else myself. If I was looking at a thousand dollar bill to fix one like some people are I might think otherwise.
