e500slr

So I did a very stupid thing with my Airmatic. I blew a few fuses for other reasons last week and so I "borrowed" the 15A fuse for the Airmatic (not knowing it's for the Airmatic) and so the Airmatic was disabled. The rear goes down gradually anyway but it's been like that for a while but hasn't failed yet. The car wouldn't go up when I started it (obviously because the pump isn't working) and so the rear wouldn't inflate. Gradually it went down as far as it can and to be honest with you, I drove it like that for around 40-50 miles the other day without realizing the back was so down.

I realized my sheer stupidity and put back the fuse because I noticed the pump wasn't even trying to pump the struts. The car went up to normal.

The question is, did I destroy my rear shocks/struts driving them bottomed out like that and pretty fast to and went over some bumps too. So far it's too early to tell if any damage was done, the struts are inflating but again, how bad is it?

PS. Yes, I know how incredibly retarded what I did was, a goldfish wouldn't be this stupid.

MTV10

I wouldn't worry about it.

Ls1toAMG

Sounds like no harm done. Mine have been leaking slowly for 9'months

cetialpha5

Aren't you supposed to get that fixed quickly? I believe if you wait too long, you end up burning out the pump and then it will cost even more money to replace that later. It's possible that it's just a minor leak and won't cost that much to fix if you do it now.

e500slr

How would one fix a minor leak without replacing the strut?

By the way, everybody should do their pump filter, it can save the struts from failing prematurely and is very cheap.

cetialpha5

If you search the forums, there are other threads about people finding leaks in the air lines or near the pump that don't involve replacing the strut.

e500slr

Interesting, could save alot of money, thanks for letting me know. I'll check on how to test for it. It's linear at the moment for the rears, both have the same behaviour, they would dump in 4-5 days if the car is not started, the fronts stay the same.