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Thank Sir,
I have to admit never being a mechanic, I have always had my local mechanic do this type of repairs for me. I’ve learned on prior attempts to fix things, it costs me more to take my damaged parts in for repairs after I’ve broken it.
My question, what compressor do you recommend and confirming during the removal and installation of the new compressor there should be a loss of air pressure?
Thanks
Arnott non-chinesium with the lifetime warranty
no loss of pressure
I drove to the Bay Area today and back. I noticed I received the air ride notice again with “malfunction” as a warning. When I got home I noticed the front the car was higher than the rear of car but both end were off equal height. I raised my car to the maximum height and noticed all wheels were of equal height and when I lowered the car all tires were equal height but I did get “compressor hot and cooling down” message. Again is this a symptom of a bad air ride compressor?
I see AMK compressors are $450 which is less than I thought it would be but now I have see if my local mechanic wants to do the job…
Last edited by KYBRIGGS82; Feb 5, 2022 at 08:19 PM.
I drove to the Bay Area today and back. I noticed I received the air ride notice again with “malfunction” as a warning. When I got home I noticed the front the car was higher than the rear of car but both end were off equal height. I raised my car to the maximum height and noticed all wheels were of equal height and when I lowered the car all tires were equal height but I did get “compressor hot and cooling down” message. Again is this a symptom of a bad air ride compressor?
I see AMK compressors are $450 which is less than I thought it would be but now I have see if my local mechanic wants to do the job…
yes this is the classic compressor failing symptom, but the rear sag warrants a check for leaky bags.
I’m going to order the Arnott P-3722 AMK air compressor Monday and hopefully resolves my issues.
Question: Prior to installing the new compressor how can you test the old compressor to verify that was the air ride suspension issue? What is the manufacture recommended torque when connecting lines?
you cannot get a torque wrench around an airline unless you have special crows foot adapter so don’t worry about that.
like I said earlier your root cause issue is leaky bags, and the fact that your rear sags warrants a closer inspection of those airbags. Your compressor is worn out from a number of causes, primarily being probably 10+ years old, secondarily in the last year or so of its life trying to pressurize those leaky bags; likely the rear ones. If you have a Autel or actual X entry system you can test the compressor output, and the threshold is for it to make 16 bars in 40 seconds, which is very liberal. I had a physically broken compressor pass that test while obvious damage was evident. Search my other threads for this.
Last edited by Max Blast; Feb 6, 2022 at 01:55 PM.
I changed out the air ride compressor for my 2012 GL350 this morning with a new Arnott compressor but where is the the exact location/position of the new relay included with the compressor?
Last edited by KYBRIGGS82; Feb 18, 2022 at 04:03 PM.
Thanks for all the great info everyone!! Late last summer I noticed my front drop after parked for 24hrs... Well I've ignored it and now it's gotten to a point where I'll describe it as critical or close to it - it's worse on colder Canadian mornings.
Just ordered all new rear Arnott bags and front Bilstein - the full assembly. I saw someone mentioned to keep the factory strut and only replace the airbag?? I was even thinking about buying 2 new struts for the rear just so everything is new.
Will there be a noticeable difference in front Bilstein struts and factory Mercedes ones?
This thing has been a tank for our family, it's towed our trailer tens of thousands of KM like a champ.. So the 2 years I got out of the factory suspension was longer than I originally anticipated. It had 91,000km on it and now it has 170,000km. Tires are by far the most expensive part of owning this thing 🤣🤣
I wound up with Arnotts in the back, and Suncore in the front. It's been two weeks since I got the truck back from the shop. The system is holding air and the ride is amazing. Between the new tires, brakes, front struts, rear shocks, and rear airbags it's been restored to nearly 100% of its former glory. I didn't need any additional suspension work. The clunking noise from the front is gone. The bounciness from the rear is no more. The only issue I am having is I am occasionally getting the Malfunction message. Sometimes when that happens after a few miles the truck gets locked into sport mode. But everything still works. No sagging, no overfilling. I still haven't replaced the compressor because it seems to be doing the job, however, the malfunction might be from the compressor. I have to have the truck scanned again.
I changed out the air ride compressor for my 2012 GL350 this morning with a new Arnott compressor but where is the the exact location/position of the new relay included with the compressor?
Arnott does two things that annoy me. One is imply you ought change the relay. The other, considerably more damaging, is that you ought change the air line fittings.
Change the relay if it stops working. Change the fittings if they leak.
Getting back to the topic of the post - I can confirm(at least in my experience over the past several weeks) cold weather does 100% impact my air suspension since I'm already having issues with leaking bags(front passenger & rear driver). The past few days it's been milder, temp floating around 0°C and the suspension pumps up and works OK - not getting any warnings or errors...
Today is another cold Canadian winter morning- -15°C and as I anticipated, no pump-up and am getting Malfunction air suspension warning. Since I have the Diesel GL350, I let it warm up every morning for 15-30 mins before I take the kids to daycare so I'm giving it plenty of time to pressure the system.
Today was a bumpy ride according to my 2 year-old son sitting in the back - who seems to actually enjoy it lol....
Don't worry for all those concerned about me driving so deflated - My new suspension in scheduled for delivery mid next week & I'm only driving 7km round-trip thanks to my small town living . Last week I had a few mornings like this and I figured driving with it so low would kill the bags even on the not-so-cold days but everything worked fine yesterday.
Picture for entertainment:
We got some fresh snow the past 2 days, ~25CM / 10inches - this thing loves the snow just as much as I enjoy driving it in the snow!!! But I've had enough with winter for this year & am counting down the days to get the 21's back on!
If you’ve driven the car with the front down over a bump, you now have guaranteed leaks from pounding the bag into itself.
your compressor is also toast from trying to pressurize leaking airbags, likely the front ones.
since you have ADS you need to hang onto your struts if they are factory and not leaking.
Put new bags on those struts, do not trust aftermarket complete assemblies to replicate the ride quality you have with a properly working ADS.
How do you know if your truck has ADS? I have a 09 Mercedes-Benz GL 450 (X164) that I bought for my parents back in September. Like the original poster, I began to have issues with ride quality and ride height around October/November. Mine became much more pronounced when the temperature in Texas dropped down to 18°. I am sure that my compressor is completely blown because it is louder than a fighter jet at take off. Two days ago my press compressor got loud for about 30 seconds, the car tried to level off and then I got then I got a malfunction symbol on my dash. Looks like I’m about yo drop some coin :-[
Update: When last I posted I had received the new air compressor from Arnott. I had it installed. The car will level, but I am still getting a malfunction message on the dash that cuts the compressor off. This is becoming very frustrating. This new compressor isn't as quiet as I thought it would be. The one on my S class is silent. All you hear is a faint humming sound. I am getting to the point where I regret not converting the system to regular struts and springs.
I know C1503 is the code for the compressor running too long, or taking too long to recover. The ONLY thing I can think of is that the shop did not replace the filter for the air compressor. Beyond that, I am at a loss. Everything in there is brand new, not rebuilt from Arnott. Mind you I had more codes before I cleared them. These were the ones that came back. Once I cleared them the compressor came on again, but the truck is still struggling to raise itself to full height in off-road mode.
Last edited by The Thomas J; Apr 24, 2022 at 10:03 PM.
What are you reading these codes with?If you’re not using a Mbstar/Das compatible scan tool, most of this is just red herring garbage.
Yeah the 1503 does relate to a error code that you’ll get in DAs stating that the compressor is taking too long to fill the reservoir.
Which means that:
1. it’s weak, or
2. there is a leak in the line between the compressor and the valve block, or
3. a leak in line between the valve block and the Reservoir.
What are you reading these codes with?If you’re not using a Mbstar/Das compatible scan tool, most of this is just red herring garbage.
Yeah the 1503 does relate to a error code that you’ll get in DAs stating that the compressor is taking too long to fill the reservoir.
Which means that:
1. it’s weak, or
2. there is a leak in the line between the compressor and the valve block, or
3. a leak in line between the valve block and the Reservoir.
I used Carly. I have it for my BMW and had good results. I added the Mercedes package to see what's going on with my GL. The shop did replace a broken airline between the compressor and the filter.
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