honyock

My car has been giving me a visit shop warning for the airmatic on my morning commute, so I stopped this morning and tried to see what the fault code was and got nothing with my iCarsoft MBII. (Not sure if it is able to pull a code for the airmatic anyway.)

If I stop and restart car, the malfunction warning clears without fail.

Is this an indication my air struts are failing, or is the car just having trouble with the sub-40°F weather?

The car never has the warning in the afternoon.

NCTRNL

The iCarsoft MBII can definitely pull Suspension codes. Even if it clears from the dash, the code would still be stored in the system for the reader to pull. Cold weather tends to bring out the worst in my E500 so it's possible one of the springs is leaking a bit when they get cold. In my experience, it will eventually make itself very obvious.

honyock

it was weird, it was showing 1 malfunction on the car LCD, but no faults when I tried to read it, this was just after stopping.

Worst case, I'll check them out when I replace the lower ball joints soon.

The car seems to have no issues holding air for a few days at a time, haven't let it sit much longer than that any time recently. If they are bad, I am very DIY capable, haven't used a mechanic in probably 13 years since I had to have a spark plug thread replaced on my 2000 Mustang GT while I was living in the dorms in the Air Force and didnt have the proper tools with me.

honyock

it looks like I may have figured it out. in AZ the afternoons are significantly warmer than the coldest mornings, so the pressure in the tank will correspondingly drop with the wide temp swing. Each morning the warning came on, I was using the raise vehicle button right as I left my driveway and this was causing a reservoir recharge time to be too long.

I haven't had the issue yet this week since I stopped using the raise vehicle button in the morning.

I did finally find the way to pull codes with the iCarsoft unit. Talk about counterintuitive...anyway it is pretty darn handy even if the GUI is weirdly designed.

honyock

now I just need to replace the ball joints, and figure out what tires I want to install on my new Mandrus Stirling 19x8.5 wheels.

bbirdwell

honyock, since you are a USAF veteran, request a USAF veteran sticker to go with your user name. Look under "site announcements".