Air suspension fix

[bfeng]

My 2011X5d has 117k miles on it. I knew I was overdue for a leaky bag, so i put in a pair of Arnotts. Shortly After I put in the new bags I started getting an intermittent, “Self Leveling Suspension Inactive,” error . The ride height was fine, I had checked for air leaks with soapy water, and the pump wasn’t running excessively. So I bought a couple ride height sensors ($90/ea).

When I went to replace the sensors, I noticed the driver side harness had been lightly touching the suspension arm. When I removed the old wire wrapping and inspected it closely I noticed one of the six wires had a very small compromise in its insulation due to the occasional rubbing on the suspension. I cut it open, and sure enough about 1/8” of the internal copper wire had corroded and turned to green dust. This caused an intermittent broken connection whenever the harness flexed a certain amount, and hence the error message.

I spliced the bad wire but didn’t install the new height sensors. Problem solved. I was pretty happy to have saved $180 in sensors.

Lesson learned, when you think you have a bad sensor don’t forget to check the harness for integrity.