Rear suspension air bag replacement

[rph74]

Originally Posted by vegasX5

So I received a call back from the SA and he said the bag on the passenger side is toast. He said the driver side is about to go as well and replacing just the passenger side may put undue pressure on the driver side causing it to fail quickly.

I don't really have the time right now to do this repair myself, so he gave me a quote. He said they would do both bags including labor and tax for $960 (and that includes clearing an air bag light that just came on the other day as well). Doing only one bag will be a little over $700, which doesn't seem like enough of savings to justify skipping it. I guess the question I'm up against is do I see myself keeping the X long enough to warrant dropping the money into it, and the price seems relatively reasonable for a dealership cost. Any thoughts? It seems like the cost to convert over to conventional would pretty much be a wash at this point and wouldn't be an expedient option considering it is my daily driver now.

That seems like a decent price for a dealership. How much of that quote was parts? Just curious.

It would cost you around 1400-1500 to convert to springs, and have a dealership clear the suspension error message. So I guess it really does come down to how long you plan to keep the X5. $600 buys you peace of mind, but you'll need to keep that truck a while to make it worthwhile!

[vegasX5]

Originally Posted by rph74

That seems like a decent price for a dealership. How much of that quote was parts? Just curious.

It would cost you around 1400-1500 to convert to springs, and have a dealership clear the suspension error message. So I guess it really does come down to how long you plan to keep the X5. $600 buys you peace of mind, but you'll need to keep that truck a while to make it worthwhile!

He originally quoted me a very high cost and I asked him for the prices on the bags and he said they were $300 a piece. I told him I had just seen them listed on realoem.com for $188 a piece, so I said I'll just have an indy order them from there and put them on. He said he was going to "talk to the parts dept. to see if there was any wiggle room on the price", and shockingly the new quote was $400+ less than the original . It's annoying to have to negotiate, but in the end it's not a terrible price and I do feel confident they're going to do a good job. I went ahead and authorized them to do it and they gave me a nice loaner for the weekend. I still haven't picked up my X5 yet, so I'll update if anything goes sideways!

[vegasX5]

Finally picked it up this morning. Total damage was $960 and that was for both rear air bags and all the labor to get them in. They also cleared an airbag light that for some reason had come on recently and fixed a couple of other small things. The SA didn't realize I had the sliding load floor which he said ended up taking them more time then he estimated too. So all in all having the repair done right with factory parts by the dealer and getting a nice loaner for 4 days I feel the price is pretty fair. FWIW, he said that both bags were essentially disintegrating when they removed them. The dry climate and heat here in Vegas obviously exacerbated the issue, but just a heads up for everyone with ~100k on the air suspension.

[psandg]

Just replaced my rear air suspension bags. Thanks to several threads I was able to prepare and do the repair with realitivity ease. In total time spent to do, was about two hours. First air bag to longer, due to not have done one before. Second about 30 minutes. Three clips and they are out.


Save myself hundreds of dollars!