Hi,
After a week of very very cold weather [-35c/-31f] I'm having some airmatic trouble. The system has been fine up until this point. A couple of days after the cold weather the entire suspension collapsed even though the car wasn't being driven. I left it until the weather warmed up to around -10c/14f. After starting the car, it would not air up, despite the compressor running. After messing with it and using the scantool [cycling the valve block solenoids, and waiting for the compressor lockout timers] I got it to eventually raise up. I did notice the overall system pressure is low [8-9 bar, i've not yet tried to get it higher as I didn't know until now it should be - it seems that it is unable to raise the rear within the specified runtime of the compressor before interlock occurs, and takes ~3 cycles of the compressor to get the back corner to lift, though it has done it quickly once or twice]

Now I'm faced with one corner [right rear] that leaks down. It's done it within an hour, and also it's lasted 5-6 before leaking down totally..

Ive not yet had a chance to bring car indoors to thaw it out and see if problem goes away...

I am wondering - is this almost certainly a damaged strut, or can a bad/leaking valve block cause total collapse on one corner? I read on w220.wiki that a failing block will not cause the car to go all the way down due to the residual pressure valves in each shock. Is this true?
I'm going to be bringing it in the shop to look at later this week and am hoping for wisdom/guidance from anyone that may have encountered this... I want to belive the valve block is sticking/has ice or something in it, especially given the inconsistency in the collapse/inflate times I've seen, but that's probably wishful thinking...

Thank you!

EDIT:Car is a 2004 S500

 

It’s very simple, and a very common problem for W-2 20s in extreme cold you have water droplets in the airlines, and in the valve blocks, and those water, droplets freeze and hold the valves open, making the car unable to raise in extreme cold. Mercedes addressed this issue by putting desiccant in the compressor to pull the water droplets out of the compressed air. But after all these years, the desiccant has become saturated and gone bad. There’s a detailed write up at Benzworld about how to either put new dessicant in the pump , or you can just replace the pump which comes with fresh desiccant.

 

Here is the detailed thread with pics , you might need to register to see the pics full size
https://www.benzworld.org/threads/ai...ccant.2411265/

 

You can just stick those silica desiccant ***** in an oven for 3 hours @ 300F to reactivate them. And if you shop around you can find some that turn from blue to pink when saturated, though I'm not sure those would be suitable for this application. Helps for the ones I keep in my safe tho.

 

You should not punish a 20+ year old super car by driving it at those temperatures.
You'll and up paying for it.

 

Oh I wasn't driving it! I'll drive it up to -10 or -15C or so but then it gets parked.