Hitting the day's nth pothole while driving home from the fire station last night, I got an "OFF ROAD MAX 50KM" followed by "AIR SUSPENSION INACTIVE" warning on the dash. Suspension height indicator LEDs soon switched themselves off as well.
Thinking that some height sensor could have been thrown out of range, pulled over and cleared the ABS and EAS can bus errors which re-activated the air suspension.
Tried to toggle between heights and ended up with a huge trim by the...stern and heavily listing to starboard with air suspension inactive again, of course.
Decided to limp the last 4-5 km home and ignore the puzzled looks of the cops who pulled up next to me at the traffic lights.
Used the calibration routine on the IID tool to raise the right hand rear corner to have a look underneath and sure enough the height sensor arm had broken off on the wishbone end.
Now this did not exactly come as a surprise because 3 (yes three!) years ago I had advised my then garage about the rubber thimble part being cracked and was told that they'd never seen any of those snap
Yesterday being a religious holiday here helped keep my vocabulary clean while removing the sensor at midnight. I'm glad I did because the bracket was loose too!
Having flexibility in mind, I decided against using 2 part epoxy so I reattached the broken end using a buildup of Bison multipurpose black glue with cloth tape reinforcement around the thimble then some aluminium tape on top of it all.
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| Click image to enlarge |
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Calibrated suspension and took the car for a spin, all good! Since the sensor is working perfectly well, I don't feel like replacing it just because of a silly arm. If it breaks again, I'll come up with my own build...
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