airbag suspension very weird issue

[Homerlovesbeer]

Hi all,

I've got a 4.8is with self levelling airbag suspension on all corners. The car goes through all 3 levels just fine and normally just works. Today I had a really really weird thing happen.

We went away for an overnight trip around 150km from home. No dramas until today we were doing 100Km/h down the highway. The road wasn't great however the ride suddenly turned to poo with the car bouncing all over the shop. I turned to my wife and said "I think the airbag suspension has failed" and pulled into a rest stop.

I could hear hissing coming from the rear of the car and sure enough both rear wheels were down low in the arches. After a few seconds the hissing stopped which I assume was when the pump stopped. I tried raising the car with the result being the hissing starting again, going for about 10 seconds then stopping with no change in ride height.

I grabbed a torch and got as far under the rear right side of the car as practical (hoping the car wouldn't suddenly jump into gear and run over me or the wife kills me hahaha kidding!) and asked the other half to try raising the car again. Same result, hissing which stopped but no airbag inflation.

A quick google search suggested a split airbag which I thought was the drivers side (RHD car). So far from home we thought about a tow and realised it wasn't really practical as they would tow us to the nearest garage, not home, and we'd be stuck.

So we elected to drive rather slowly along typical Australian country roads trying not to bounce our way off the road.

Making it home I parked the car in the garage and started to look at replacement airbags. After a while I thought I should look at exactly where the air is escaping from so I went back out to the garage and was going to drive the rear up a set of ramps so I could crawl under and have a better view.

The car was so low the ramp couldn't get under the car so I thought if I could get a couple of cm's of lift that would work so I started the car. The car hissed again for a few seconds then suddenly stopped at the airbags inflated like normal!

I was like "what the hell?"

I then went through all the heights, lowered to the lowest setting, raised to the highest, back to normal, low, hight etc a few times. No hissing, no sag nothing, just normal operation!

I have no idea what's going on and what failed or malfunctioned on the drive.

Does anyone have any ideas?

I can't even check for air leaks now as it's fixed itself!

Cheers