Land Rover Repair: LandRover Discovery II SE7 2001 Rear Air Suspension, landrover discovery, car repair shop

Question
Thanks John,

I really appreciate your prompt response.

I guess my fear is turning true. Firestone told me that the air compressor is bad and it was bad when I got the car in, because it cant go bad as a result of raising the car up. The only way to get that fixed is pay $450 or take the car to LR dealer.

Following your recommendation I am taking the car to dealership and hope to resolve the issue there.

Please let me know if you would have more recommendations. I live in texas.

Thanks,
Ra
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Followup To

Answer -
I'd suggest you get it out of the "popular car repair shop" unless all their tinkering is free . . . even then they may break expensive parts . . . you can't service air suspension without the special $10,000 LR diagnostic tools, which most mass merchandisers don't have.

Without a t4 or autologic you can't see what's wrong with the system.  As a result their statement about the compressor is probably just a hope and a guess.

The dealer is right, damaged air bag seals are probably the problem.  Usually the fix is to correctly seat the bag and reinflate it. Normally, no new parts are needed but a bag that comes unseated IS on its way out, as described below. . .

In our service department we lift Land Rovers all the time, and sometimes springs come loose when the wheels hang.  In my opinion, that's a sign of an air spring that's getting weak and I'd rather find it in the shop where we can fit a new tight bag than have the customer have a blowout when bouncing over a railroad crossing.  But my staff are experienced at this and equipped with the right tools, so for us it's no big deal.

You can covert the rear suspension to coil springs (available from Atlantic British 800 533 2210), but even then you need an autologic to tell the SLABS computer that the air suspension is gone.  Actually diagnosing and fixing your car properly is going to require a LR specialist.  

Answer
At this point, going to the dealer is probably your only option if you want to keep rear air suspension.

You may want to consider conversion to coils, though.  That way there is no possibliity of this happening again.  If you convert to to coils the job can be done locally with ordinary hand tools and you just have the dealer reconfigure the SLABS computer to get rid of the error message after you're done.

I suspect conversion is going to be your least expensive option.