new2012jee

I am curious if it is a huge improvement over stock, as I now see stock airbags hovering the $100/ each zone.

new2012jee

no one uses these?

I have the bilstein 5100 rears ready to go on, but rather do both at once. I guess I will go the Arnott route on the air springs over OEM.

milbydave

I replaced my 2005 gx with StrutMaster/ I did not want to go down the road of paying 2-3k for rear suspension / air bags, pump ect... It is the same ride, well worth it. Cost around 300, on line, and was charged 250 to put it in. I don't have time to go back and forth, one air bag, than next than this that... GX has 108k..June 20015....

cmacfar

If you're talking about the replacement air shock vs. stock, I'd stick with the OE ones. We have Arnott's on ours and one failed within 3,000 miles. The part was replaced under Arnott's lifetime warranty but labor will not be covered once we get it installed. I am not 100% sure yet if I'll have it installed or if I'm converting to a traditional setup with helper bags at this point. The helper bags can be run off the stock compressor and you still have height control but you also have springs in case they are to fail.

cmacfar

Following up on the above, we did have ours replaced with the warranty replacement part and guess what the new one was defective out of the box, oh and the next one we got, also defective. They think they have a bad batch. Arnott's customer service has been fairly good but their products are worthless.

new2012jee

Out of curiousity, how did you know the airbag was defective out the box? Can you see visible cracks or something?

cmacfar

By out of the box I mean, once installed and you pressurize the system the leak is happening with arnott's connector where it threads into their shock. It's a slow leak (i.e. in about 30-45 minutes) your car will be sitting on it's bump stops. The last two one's we were sent were both leaked in the same area. I've just sent one of them back to see what is going on but more than likely I'm just going to convert to a spring setup or go with the OE springs.

An an FYI the original Arnott bag failed by means of it coming off the lower spring perch and the rubber bag pulled away from the plastic piece that sits on the lower perch. I don't know if it was concurrently but we just all of a sudden heard a loud hissing sound and it was the shock.

Additionally these are being installed by a local Lexus dealer as I didn't have the SST to remove the airlines and didn't want to jack it up.

IncgntoLex

I have used Arnott in the past on my Ls400, and I was unimpressed. The Bilstein air struts were nice and seemed to be high quality parts. I never had a problem with them in the front of my car. The generic Arnott Airstruts installed on the rear of my car were defective out of the box (rust at the top of the strut prevented the car from switching between sport and comfort modes). I installed them anyway and they seemed to work fine until developing a small leak after 15000 miles.