Anyone else had the air suspension fail?

[Colby Boles]

This last Saturday I had the air suspension system fail with a warning alert on the dash to contact the service center. The SC took the vehicle pretty quickly on the following Tuesday (I had been given a 2 month scheduling wait time for a FWD issue I reported a few weeks earlier, so I know they are pretty backlogged in general). I'm hoping they will be able to look at the problem by tomorrow, but I'm wondering if someone else might have already experienced this issue.

In a way, I'm not surprised it had failed as I had reported weeks before that while the car is off and a few feet away from my office, I can often hear the air compressor cycling for perhaps 1 second every minute or two in the worst cases. I had told them I thought there there was perhaps an air leak in the system and that the compressor was trying to maintain either constant pressure or ride position (although one would think this in an energy-wasting strategy when the car is off and parked). It makes me wonder if the high power consumption (237W) while the vehicle was off that I had reported in this thread:

Vampire Drain - normal losses ?

might be at least in part due to this.

 

[m2s2]

Just got my X tonight. Air suspension makes a loud rumbling when changing height. Not sure if it's normal

 

[ModelX]

Mine does not make any sound that I have noticed.

 

[itay]

Mine failed and I had to take it to the SC. Ride was super uncomfortable without it.

Originally I had an appointment a few weeks out but I told them I can't drive it like this as I'm worried about doing further damage. They said to bring it in and gave me a loaner S. They ended up fixing it a couple of days later when they had an open slot at the SC. It was a blown fuse.

 

[FarmerDave]

Just got my X tonight. Air suspension makes a loud rumbling when changing height. Not sure if it's normal

That's not normal. Take it in to the SC.

 

[Colby Boles]

Just got my X tonight. Air suspension makes a loud rumbling when changing height. Not sure if it's normal

I think that's normal with the compressor running. I'm having this happen more often that it should when the car is off with no change in ride height setting.

 

[Colby Boles]

I hope to get the car back tomorrow from the SC. I think the bad part was an air manifold block. I'll find out, but I'm willing to bet it wan't properly sealed or it was cross threaded. I get the impression these early VIN production vehicles were reasonably designed but
slapped together in a rush. The car's ratio of hours driven versus hours at the SC has to be 1:10 or worse so far...

 

[vangogh]

I hope to get the car back tomorrow from the SC. I think the bad part was an air manifold block. I'll find out, but I'm willing to bet it wan't properly sealed or it was cross threaded. I get the impression these early VIN production vehicles were reasonably designed but
slapped together in a rush. The car's ratio of hours driven versus hours at the SC has to be 1:10 or worse so far...

I had an early production X and had the same issue...but the SC replaced the block connection and compressor and all is good...

 

[lloyds]

out of curiosity do the S and X share the same air suspension? I have 60K on one of my MSs and no issues whatsoever.

 

[halg]

one of the X owners in China had a AS failure.

 

[Colby Boles]

So I got the car back yesterday. The SC confirmed it was an air manifold block, but couldn't really add much more detail. It seems unlikely that the block of metal itself failed - probably the fittings were not sealed or threaded in properly. Everything seems fine now. They also replaced the rear diffuser - apparently there was a recall on those, and also re-calibrated the FWDs so that they no longer fail to close sometimes.

 

[aesculus]

I changed my AS today from always Low to Standard => Low at 50+.

I hope I don't wear it out now. I got sick and tired of running into those parking blocks.

 

[Colby Boles]

I'm still hearing my air compressor run for about a minute at least once a day, which is different than the short bursts which used to happen much more often. Anyone know if this is normal? It seems weird considering the car is supposed to be "off" - I'm not sure why it would find maintaining the ride height and / or air pressure so critical when the vehicle is not in use.

 

[Fiver]

I'm still hearing my air compressor run for about a minute at least once a day, which is different than the short bursts which used to happen much more often. Anyone know if this is normal? It seems weird considering the car is supposed to be "off" - I'm not sure why it would find maintaining the ride height and / or air pressure so critical when the vehicle is not in use.

Probably the brake compressor.

 

[piro]

1300 km done from Tilburg to my home. I tried to lift the car to max position for the first time. It is stuck in that position now, reset does not help, errors at dash. Nearest SC is 500 km from here in Vienna (or Berlin). What now?