air suspension any good?

[cluffy]

hi all,
Been sitting hear thinking about air bags on discos are thay any good offroad? As puting a disco fitted with air suspension on a two post lift is a big no no. Isnt that the same as hanging a wheel whilst offroading?

[thermidorthelobster]

I have no complaints about mine;  nice ride, handles great off road too.  I have hung mine off two post lifts several times too;  the air bags extend but the shocks stop them pulling apart.  Off roading I'd have thought you should get less extension, particularly with an anti-roll bar, because the other end of the axle will be up on the bump stop.

[cluffy]

just that the last disco i put on a two poster it knackerd the bags and cost owner alot of money to put right. Oooooops.

[discodave81]

We had only had one 4 post ramp at the main dealer i worked at all the rest were 2 post never had any proplems

[Range Rover Blues]

You only wreck the airbags if the shockers are too long.  As for the ability off road, well air bags come with ACE don't they :-k in which case ignore the anti roll bars, they disconect themselves.

I've driven the RRC on air and off-road it's damned impressive.  I'm thinking of fitting EAS to Blue inthe future using Arnott GIII air springs whcih are 3" longer.

[thermidorthelobster]

As for the ability off road, well air bags come with ACE don't they :-k in which case ignore the anti roll bars, they disconect themselves.

All 7 seaters come with air bags and it was an option on 5 seaters.  ACE is an option too (I think it's included with ES spec and I'm not sure about XS).  So you don't necessarily have the two together.  Mine doesn't;  I avoided ACE as I wanted to keep things simple.

I was under the impression (not having it myself) that ACE only acted on the front axle, in which case this won't make a difference to the air bags that are only on the rear axle.

[Charlie716]

I use my air suspended Disco off road quite a bit and love the air, if (when in my case) I get stuck, the system detects the unloading at the rear and raises the rear ride hight by 2", this has often been enough to let me drive out of where I got stuck. I also find the ride on and off road very good, if an airbag goes (mine is on 161k miles on original bags) I will just replace a bag (15 min job), I won't be doing a coil conversion.

[cluffy]

thanks charlie.

[Range Rover Blues]

I was under the impression (not having it myself) that ACE only acted on the front axle, in which case this won't make a difference to the air bags that are only on the rear axle.

I'd thought the same until I saw a diagram of it somewhere, the rear ARB is tucked up under the boot floor unlike a Disco I.  It makes sense too otherwise as the ACE startes to work you'd get progressively worse understeer as the front ARB tried to do all the work, defeating the object of it being there.

[muddyjames]

after being driven around in a refuse lorry on air bags and the horrible non smooth ride that provided I am suprised to hear that air bags on a disco make a comfy ride. Learnt something new for today!

[Range Rover Blues]

TBH my LSE is a harder ride than Blue or the wife's TDi, though they could both use some stronger rear springs, but it's the best compramise of ride and handling.

[thermidorthelobster]

I've been running around today in a TD5 with air bags on the back and OME springs on the front (OME shocks all round), and a 300tdi with factory springs and shocks.  The 300tdi has a noticeably harder ride.  I'm not totally sure how much is down to the springs, and how much is down to the shocks.  I found the ride on my P38, which had airbags all round, tended to be a bit wallowy;  AndyCWB fitted Koni shocks to his and found it better, but I moved to the TD5 Disco before I got round to it.

[Range Rover Blues]

I'd love Koni shocks.  TBH I went to uprated shocks to kill the steering kickback I was getting and I found they handled better so left them on.  The ProCOmp and Britpart cellular ones are both a hard ride and the Britpart ones have less rebound damping (they hot the top of the travel driving off speed bumps in high profile) so I wish I'd tried DeCarbons now, Konis are too expensive for now.