GL450 Front passenger Sag Only on flat surfaces and not in my slanted driveway?
 

Hi!

I have a 2012 GL450 and just this past week the front passenger side started to sag. What i've noticed is that when i'm parked at home in my driveway, which is somewhat slanted and uneven, not leveled. The front right does not sag at all over night. I will wake up the next day and its fine. However, whenever i'm running an errand and park at a flat leveled parking lot. The front passenger sags. As soon as i unlock the door, it will make the wosh noise and it raises back up. Based on my observations, I don't hear the compressor running while driving. What could it be?

Thanks for the help!

The bag is starting to leak when it's folded a certain way. This is VERY normal and you can find multiple threads about this if you wanted to search. It will eventually get worse. Diagnosis, just to double check, is always the same... soapy water and experimenting with "raised height".

What he said...

Start saving for new air struts but don't wait too long as compressor is working extra hard. Until then, avoid parking on flat surfaces if possible :D

Thanks for the feedback guys. I was just in denial and hoping that it was maybe the airhose. I change the airbags on our x5, so i will just suck it up and do these ones. Question to you guys is..... Should i just replace the entire air strut and airbag rather than just the airbag? That way i don't have to remove the airbag from the strut.

How do i know if my 2012 GL450 has ADS?

Disregard. Found a diagram..

Attachment 440524

This is totally your call... Time/Effort vs cost. Most guys I've seen talk about this (on this forum, anyways... which is certainly not indicative of the entire GL-owning population) replace as an entire assembly. I did it that way, as well. It wasn't a huge cost difference, in my mind, to save the time of piece-mealing it. Besides, that way everything is new. Another vote for Arnott, as well.

Just wanted to give everyone an update. Yesterday, I checked the hose line thats connected to the top of the airbag in the engine bay and made sure it was tight. I removed the sensor under the wheel well and cleaned it and put it back in, and this morning I parked on a level surface and it did not sag. Im going to monitor it all day to see if the right front will sag again. Maybe it was a one off thing. Who knows? Either way, I am most likely going to replace both airbag and struts since i already ordered the Arnotts. Also, the car is at actually 64k miles and not 75k. Not sure if that makes a difference.

Did you experiment with it raised?

Was it really just a "one off thing"? From your first post, it sounds like it happened a few times? These things don't "fix" themselves... as noted, it will progressively get worse as the hole gets bigger.

No i haven't tried it raised. I will try that out today. It happened 4 times this weekend when each time i parked on a flat surface, but nothing today when i parked on a flat surface. I stayed leveled. When i replace the airbag and strut this Thursday, i will examine the bag to see if there was a hole.

The hole is definitely there - but it may be hard to find as it will likely just be a "weak point" in the bag at this point. That's why it doesn't always leak out - depends on how it folds. In 99.9% of the cases like yours, the culprit is the bag. That's why, though, it's good to double check with the soapy water trick. I try to avoid replacing things without knowing the actual cause.