So I'm finally more down the road with this. It turned out the PO/Dealer had different front air struts on each side. Drivers side was a remanufactured Arnott BMW strut and the left was a Suncore air strut. I called Suncore because that was the side that created the breakage and they told me outright that their air strut would allow bottoming out to happen. Maybe the bmw/arnott on the other side would have broken as well if it was Suncore. All in all surprising to me that this was possible on top of my bad INPA calibration numbers.


I replaced the axle, seal and my sway bar links up front while I was at it. Drove it around trying to calibrate it a little bit being extremely careful to not bottom out. The calibration was difficult, I had a feeling something wasn't right. Then I turned on the Analog readings while I was backing down my driveway. I could see the rear height numbers moving according to which wheel was high/or low they look good, the fronts never changed value, somehow the front height values were locked in place or the height sensors disabled, who knows. They weren't working like the back sensors.


The short, I decided I'm not going to have my kids riding around with any suspension this could happen to, scary. I ordered a spring conversion kit for all 4 from ECS, FCP didn't have anything or anybody else. I went to a pick your part and got two front strut assemblies off of a 4.4 and I'll have more updates soon.


Also, after I got the axle in I found out the leak I was seeing of diff fluid was not the old seal getting ravaged from the CV breaking but the nice little o-ring behind the axle bracket on the passenger side. Got the axle back in and tried it out only to look under the car the next day and see all the gear oil back on the floor. Joy! It's pretty obvious that the diff oil is coming out from behind that metal bracket. I have to take all four wheels off for the spring conversion anyway and apparently there some way I can spare myself taking the new axle out of the hub.


I'm slowly learning that the largest problems with cars are not the cars, but the people who've touched them. I'm still gonna fix her up nice.