oktowncar
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Rarely will it be a hose issue
Town Car air suspension problems? Read this thread!
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smokozuna
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I have a 2007 Town Car. The air suspension does not leak down overnight but does leak down while driving or sitting parked with the car running. The compressor runs approximately every 60 seconds for about 10 seconds when the car is running. Any help would be appreciated.
Also can you use a 2011 Air Suspension Module in a 2007? Are the 2003 to 2011 modules interchangeable?
Also can you use a 2011 Air Suspension Module in a 2007? Are the 2003 to 2011 modules interchangeable?
Action
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Finding a leak with a spray bottle of soapy water. Raise the vehicle safely. Spray and wipe a section of the system, move further along the system and repeat.
However, I would start at an air bag. This is common leak area.
Action
However, I would start at an air bag. This is common leak area.
Action
bubbbbbbbbbas
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oktowncar
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That is the Axle vent tubeI was asking if the broke hose in the picture was a air hose
I'm starting my journey into my 99 Cartier air suspension replacement and had a couple ?s. Today I drove the rear end up on some wood blocks and sprayed the bags with soapy water and sure enough it was a bubbling slowly in a couple spots, each bag. I'm getting it just levels off to some PSI due to cracks being exposed as it unfolds. Currently, I get about 25" from ground to top edge of quarter panel bottom over the wheel itself, while fronts are around 29", so it's very pimp right now. While looking for bubbles I see two components I don't know, what are these? Red circle on bag is where I think it's leaking the most.
Next, connected to the compressor, is this Minnesota shaped dingus with a hose connected to the compressor. I see this dingus in only some parts pictures of replacement compressors on rockauto. What is it? Also where is this vent solenoid located?
Lastly, just some FYI, I found this mounting flange protruding from the wheel well liner rubs up against the air line going back to the bags. There's no post to connect this flange to and I can't find a hole to drop a screw in, so I'm thinking about sawing it off. It's worn a small flat spot on the air line. Whaddyathink?
Next, connected to the compressor, is this Minnesota shaped dingus with a hose connected to the compressor. I see this dingus in only some parts pictures of replacement compressors on rockauto. What is it? Also where is this vent solenoid located?
Lastly, just some FYI, I found this mounting flange protruding from the wheel well liner rubs up against the air line going back to the bags. There's no post to connect this flange to and I can't find a hole to drop a screw in, so I'm thinking about sawing it off. It's worn a small flat spot on the air line. Whaddyathink?
Hey flap, you ought to post this in a solo thread for more/better help. I'm not familiar enough with your era, but that curlyque hose in the first pic is an axle vent tube. The thing that looks like a popoid seems to be the ride-height sensor. The two dingi (dinguses?), I'm not sure..
I guess I'm solving most of my own Q's so this is documentation just for future travelers.
Arnott brand: So apparently this company was bought last year by a merger and acquisitions company, which I thought, that's probably not good, but decided to buy both the bags and new solenoids from them anyway through rockauto thinking they probably still have old stock. Well guess wut. If you guessed quality is job #2 with #1 being shareholder valuation then you guessed right. The solenoid o-rings that come with it are thicker than the replacement o-rings that come with the bags, by a smidge. There is a nylon washer/divider between the two smaller o-rings (to hold in place and keep them from squishing up against each other) which is at least half the thickness of the old OEM nylon washer (it's nearly invisible.) The plastic finish on the solenoid insertion hole in the bags is not that smooth. I could get one arnott solenoid into one arnott bag but the other one wouldn't go. This is assembling the solenoid and bag before install; if you had to do it after you hooked up the solenoid and installed the bag, you'd best be part gorilla. What happens is that the loosy-goosey thin nylon washer just allows the trailing o-ring to ride up over the shaft. Grease all you want, it's still a crap shoot if that o-ring doesn't slide out and over the solenoid shaft (toward where the big o-ring sits.) To get the other one to fit I had to use the thinner replacement o-rings that came with the bag (If you weren't replacing solenoids) and that was still a tough fit because of that crap nylon washer not holding the o-rings in place. So bottom line, I personally, experienced some inconsistent manufacturing quality from Arnott. $271 for the four components, incl shipping, etc. I don't have pictures of this process as I was pissed off at the time.
There is enough room in the access hole to the mounted solenoid to blindly hook up the compressor hose and wiring harness, so put your solenoid and bag together before hand is my advice. There is room to get it into position. The ridiculous infrastructure that makes up the ride height sensor (99' Cartier) can make it tough to get the passenger bag into position so I found you can go up through the driver side and over stuff to get the passenger side easier.
IMPORTANT POINT: If you're pre-assembling the solenoid to the bag, the air in that bag is going to be SEALED. If you seal it squeezed, then you won't be able to pull the bottom of it down to meet the axle very easily. If you seal it full, with the bottom pulled out a bit, you might not be able to get it up around stuff to get it into position. Just install the solenoid in with the bag at rest and the bottom plunger up in it like you found it.
After I got the bags installed, the compressor was still pretty weak, going through it's full pump-up until time-out (1min?) and still not getting more than 1/2" rise. As the compressor heats up, it's effectiveness just gets worse. So if your compressor is like this, pump up in the morning, when the temp is cool and remember to turn off the switch in the trunk, wait for the compressor to fully cool then repeat. I did this for three or four days just to check the bags were installed and not leaking. It's currently summer here and gets upto 100f. With the switch off in the trunk, I saw a rise in height of a full inch just from air heating up in the bags alone. If you ride with the switch on, then just the jostling of driving will be too much for compressor to overcome and you'll deflate your bags when the compressor finally kicks on.
So I didn't want to buy a new compressor, that was another $200 (and I didn't trust the $50 one to provide adequate pressure when driving.) I saw some other youtube where a guy takes it apart (and destroys it) so I thought I'd take a peek myself. He did destroy the dryer assembly by grinding away the plastic at the inlet side and you can see there is a baffle at that end to allow air to disperse evenly to the drying pellets, but what was more interesting was that it was clogged with dust from the compressor piston wearing away. I can't find that video anymore.
So first thing was take the air compressor assembly out, disconnect that dryer can. The can itself is was way too flimsy to put in a vise or get a tool on to get the outlet end open. My plan was to open it up and take out the drying pellets and recook them in the oven but that never happened because the screw lid for this thing won't budge. Either the pellets are too fully expanded or it's just too tight to try and take off with out breaking it. Other dryer cans I've seen have tool supports in the plastic housing to help with that but this OEM one did not. So I figured there is a lot of piston dust in there clogging the dispersion baffle. Banging on it a bit upside down and running some compressed air through it probably broke it up a bit.
I marked the piston collar with a T for top and noted the orientation. Four long bolts hold it on.
The black hose in the foreground, which goes to the Minnesota shaped dingus previously mentioned, is dual purpose air intake for the pump and exhaust for the vent solenoid. There are four wires to this compressor, two go to the motor and I guess the other two to the vent solenoid inside this head unit. The smaller black hose in the background is for air equalization to the inside of the piston body.
Pulling off the piston collar you can see the piston and the rings on it are made of some plastic/brakeshoe-ish like material. Mine had a few grooves in them from some obvious schmutz getting in there. The bottom seat is also made of this same ring material. Look how dirty that collar seat is. Top seat has that orange o-ring. The green ring is the air intake flap for the downstroke and the small black hole goes to the dryer on upstroke. I guess you need a non-residue cleaner so I used throttle body cleaner and some cotton swaps. Picked the o-ring out and clean that too, getting it back in was a bit tricky as it's uncompressed diameter is larger.
You can see that the inside of the collar is worn more heavily on one side because of the way the pump stroke rotates. I decided to turn the collar 180 when putting it back together so it can start abusing the other side.
And that actually did it. The compressor works like a charm, pumps up fast now and only runs for a few seconds when it does need to pump up. Bang and blow through the dryer with compressed air, clean the seats and seals of the piston collar, and rotate the collar 180. Like new. I live in a non-humid area so my dryer media is probably not so saturated.
Arnott brand: So apparently this company was bought last year by a merger and acquisitions company, which I thought, that's probably not good, but decided to buy both the bags and new solenoids from them anyway through rockauto thinking they probably still have old stock. Well guess wut. If you guessed quality is job #2 with #1 being shareholder valuation then you guessed right. The solenoid o-rings that come with it are thicker than the replacement o-rings that come with the bags, by a smidge. There is a nylon washer/divider between the two smaller o-rings (to hold in place and keep them from squishing up against each other) which is at least half the thickness of the old OEM nylon washer (it's nearly invisible.) The plastic finish on the solenoid insertion hole in the bags is not that smooth. I could get one arnott solenoid into one arnott bag but the other one wouldn't go. This is assembling the solenoid and bag before install; if you had to do it after you hooked up the solenoid and installed the bag, you'd best be part gorilla. What happens is that the loosy-goosey thin nylon washer just allows the trailing o-ring to ride up over the shaft. Grease all you want, it's still a crap shoot if that o-ring doesn't slide out and over the solenoid shaft (toward where the big o-ring sits.) To get the other one to fit I had to use the thinner replacement o-rings that came with the bag (If you weren't replacing solenoids) and that was still a tough fit because of that crap nylon washer not holding the o-rings in place. So bottom line, I personally, experienced some inconsistent manufacturing quality from Arnott. $271 for the four components, incl shipping, etc. I don't have pictures of this process as I was pissed off at the time.
There is enough room in the access hole to the mounted solenoid to blindly hook up the compressor hose and wiring harness, so put your solenoid and bag together before hand is my advice. There is room to get it into position. The ridiculous infrastructure that makes up the ride height sensor (99' Cartier) can make it tough to get the passenger bag into position so I found you can go up through the driver side and over stuff to get the passenger side easier.
IMPORTANT POINT: If you're pre-assembling the solenoid to the bag, the air in that bag is going to be SEALED. If you seal it squeezed, then you won't be able to pull the bottom of it down to meet the axle very easily. If you seal it full, with the bottom pulled out a bit, you might not be able to get it up around stuff to get it into position. Just install the solenoid in with the bag at rest and the bottom plunger up in it like you found it.
After I got the bags installed, the compressor was still pretty weak, going through it's full pump-up until time-out (1min?) and still not getting more than 1/2" rise. As the compressor heats up, it's effectiveness just gets worse. So if your compressor is like this, pump up in the morning, when the temp is cool and remember to turn off the switch in the trunk, wait for the compressor to fully cool then repeat. I did this for three or four days just to check the bags were installed and not leaking. It's currently summer here and gets upto 100f. With the switch off in the trunk, I saw a rise in height of a full inch just from air heating up in the bags alone. If you ride with the switch on, then just the jostling of driving will be too much for compressor to overcome and you'll deflate your bags when the compressor finally kicks on.
So I didn't want to buy a new compressor, that was another $200 (and I didn't trust the $50 one to provide adequate pressure when driving.) I saw some other youtube where a guy takes it apart (and destroys it) so I thought I'd take a peek myself. He did destroy the dryer assembly by grinding away the plastic at the inlet side and you can see there is a baffle at that end to allow air to disperse evenly to the drying pellets, but what was more interesting was that it was clogged with dust from the compressor piston wearing away. I can't find that video anymore.
So first thing was take the air compressor assembly out, disconnect that dryer can. The can itself is was way too flimsy to put in a vise or get a tool on to get the outlet end open. My plan was to open it up and take out the drying pellets and recook them in the oven but that never happened because the screw lid for this thing won't budge. Either the pellets are too fully expanded or it's just too tight to try and take off with out breaking it. Other dryer cans I've seen have tool supports in the plastic housing to help with that but this OEM one did not. So I figured there is a lot of piston dust in there clogging the dispersion baffle. Banging on it a bit upside down and running some compressed air through it probably broke it up a bit.
I marked the piston collar with a T for top and noted the orientation. Four long bolts hold it on.
The black hose in the foreground, which goes to the Minnesota shaped dingus previously mentioned, is dual purpose air intake for the pump and exhaust for the vent solenoid. There are four wires to this compressor, two go to the motor and I guess the other two to the vent solenoid inside this head unit. The smaller black hose in the background is for air equalization to the inside of the piston body.
Pulling off the piston collar you can see the piston and the rings on it are made of some plastic/brakeshoe-ish like material. Mine had a few grooves in them from some obvious schmutz getting in there. The bottom seat is also made of this same ring material. Look how dirty that collar seat is. Top seat has that orange o-ring. The green ring is the air intake flap for the downstroke and the small black hole goes to the dryer on upstroke. I guess you need a non-residue cleaner so I used throttle body cleaner and some cotton swaps. Picked the o-ring out and clean that too, getting it back in was a bit tricky as it's uncompressed diameter is larger.
You can see that the inside of the collar is worn more heavily on one side because of the way the pump stroke rotates. I decided to turn the collar 180 when putting it back together so it can start abusing the other side.
And that actually did it. The compressor works like a charm, pumps up fast now and only runs for a few seconds when it does need to pump up. Bang and blow through the dryer with compressed air, clean the seats and seals of the piston collar, and rotate the collar 180. Like new. I live in a non-humid area so my dryer media is probably not so saturated.
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TexinaTC
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TLDR; 19 pages was too much but I did get some info from all this.
Seems to the best way to deal with a leaky air suspension is to convert it to a coil spring system. From the recs in here I found this kit on strutmasters.com and could probably handle the install myself. Even if it seems a bit daunting once I've got the parts, my mechanic is a saint and would probably do it for cheap. Just to be safe, this is the correct kit, yes? 1990-2011 Lincoln Town Car Rear Air Suspension Conversion Kit (FA1R0) – 1990 Lincoln Town Car – Strutmasters
Never the less, thank you in advance for any helpful comments or suggestions.
Seems to the best way to deal with a leaky air suspension is to convert it to a coil spring system. From the recs in here I found this kit on strutmasters.com and could probably handle the install myself. Even if it seems a bit daunting once I've got the parts, my mechanic is a saint and would probably do it for cheap. Just to be safe, this is the correct kit, yes? 1990-2011 Lincoln Town Car Rear Air Suspension Conversion Kit (FA1R0) – 1990 Lincoln Town Car – Strutmasters
Never the less, thank you in advance for any helpful comments or suggestions.
oktowncar
Well-known member
Converting is a personal choice.
Most like the OEM ride with the air suspension and try to keep it as such.
The coil over offers a different feel and ride. I would recommend changing the rear shocks as well
Tex, I would recommend keeping air if you're just in the leak-down phase. I just replaced the bags on mine (https://www.maxpeedingrods.com/prod...nd-marquis-air-suspension-shock-absorber.html). So far so good. I did have some problems afterward (I'll edit to link to post), but ultimately I'm very pleased I stayed with air. Caveat, some wrenching skill required (would also be for conversion); access to a two-post lift would be a HUGE help.
Last edited:
TexinaTC
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I imagine the ride would be more similar to my old Crown Vics and whatnot. Not too scared of the ride becoming a bit more firm as I've thought about tightening up everything anyway, front and rear. Not necessarily sporty but hoping I could make the suspension more communicative.
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N1ASS
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Oktowncar:I agree about personal choice.I bought all my Designers used and my one 2006 has springs and a Reese tailer hitch a 2007 with a Curt trailer hitch and Bags.I tow 5 1/2 X 10 foot utility trailer and the 06 with springs has a better ride and handling when trailer is loaded ( I never go over 1500 pounds weight including trailer ) then my other designer with bags.Now with no towing to do or thinking you might??? Hands Down Bags All The Way!!!! My opinion,That's driving up and down curves in the hills in Tennessee .
oktowncar
Well-known member
1500lbs. is a decent amount of towing for the Panther Platform.
Air bags are used in towing to support the loads on spring packs and help the ride. Semis, aftermarket midsize and large truck applications, RV's, Off Roading, Cab Seating, etc..
The Air ride is adjustable is most instances for a personal or needed touch on the ride.
IF it were mine I would utilize the OEM Air Ride to help sustain the load and comfort of the ride.
There are kits that allow for ride adjustment on the fly. I've never heard of anyone on this forum using such a kit.
Truckers have an adjustment switch on their cab seats and drive axles for optimal ride. You might consider something in that realm for comfort if you go strictly to air bags
N1ASS
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I know several truckers that have it and RV Trucks that camp around the States with the adjustable air ride.I use my trailer maybe 6 to 8 times a year and it's local around here 60 to 100 miles tops.The car came with Arnott bags about 1 year ago installed ( 2007 ),my 2006 the owner had the Arnott springs and Arnott shocks replaced about 6 months prior of him getting in accident and totaled the car.It was salvage and I got it,fixed and got a rebuilt title.Now it's my daily,it was a project I wanted to do once in my life and had fun and aggravation doing it.But all and all I Loved it.Here is a link to my post on Facebook ( ) it's public you should be able to open it, if not I'll see if I can send you a different way.I am not good with computers.
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