Rear air suspension total failure
03-29-18, 04:26 PM
#16
To me there is not a material difference between the air vs non air. This is purely subjective, but in my case I really can’t tell the difference. Others will differ and state that air is superior. That’s fine.
In in my case, I would rather have a reliable and easily fixable solution. Since I have AWD there is really no alternative to replacing worn out parts. I have about 22k on my car now and would be very happy to get 75k miles out of my air struts. Now if they crap out at 30k, then I will not be too happy. I have funds set aside just in case, but would rather spend that money on something else. At least we know the costs associated with a failure. Nothing lasts forever, so best practice is to budget for the unforeseen.
In in my case, I would rather have a reliable and easily fixable solution. Since I have AWD there is really no alternative to replacing worn out parts. I have about 22k on my car now and would be very happy to get 75k miles out of my air struts. Now if they crap out at 30k, then I will not be too happy. I have funds set aside just in case, but would rather spend that money on something else. At least we know the costs associated with a failure. Nothing lasts forever, so best practice is to budget for the unforeseen.
03-29-18, 04:34 PM
#17
Everyone's needs, wants, risk taking ability, and financial situation is different therefore everyone is correct. Otherwise we all should be just walking or taking public transportation or drive prius or something like that, right? lol
03-29-18, 04:48 PM
#19
I hear what you're saying, I'm just putting out there for those that come after us. There is nothing inherently unreliable about the air suspension. For me, there is a definite difference in ride quality and that matters to me, might not matter as much to others. You just need to realize that part of the reason these luxury cars depreciate like they do, to a point where you're paying 50% of the list after 5 years is because they come with potential high repair costs after warranty.
The LS is ludicrously reliable in comparison to other similar competitors (MB, BMW, Audi). That is, admittedly a low bar.
You might have paid the same amount as a new Honda Accord for your 5 year old LS but its still not a Honda Accord and you can't expect that maintaining it is going to be the same in cost. You got a big discount on that LS in return for paying it out later in repairs.
The LS is ludicrously reliable in comparison to other similar competitors (MB, BMW, Audi). That is, admittedly a low bar.
You might have paid the same amount as a new Honda Accord for your 5 year old LS but its still not a Honda Accord and you can't expect that maintaining it is going to be the same in cost. You got a big discount on that LS in return for paying it out later in repairs.
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sha4000 (03-29-18)
03-29-18, 07:25 PM
#20
I kind of disagree.
I researched LS430 and then bought custom luxury model 9 years ago. I haven't paid any more than what I would have paid maintaining Honda accord. I probably paid less.
I think I avoided major expense by avoiding air suspension. Air suspensions are unreliable across the brands. They just have life and replacement cost is 10 time more than regular shocks. $100 for regular shock vs. $1000 for air suspension. Both are wear items. On an average LS regular shocks have lasted longer than air but it doesn't matter, when it is time to replace your regular shocks will be 10 times less expensive.
Only things I had to do on my LS430 was replace alternator (and that is also unusual repair for LS430) and 2 door actuator motors for $6 each and my time. My mirrors don't work as well but I have learned to live with the them folded open all the time. I spent some money on aftermarket wheels but that expense is optional.
LS430 has been the best purchase. Even now it will fetch a good price in a private sale. Dealers are offering only 4500 to 6500 in trade-in.
I spent more on my previous 7 series BMW just in 1 year than 9 years of LS430 ownership.
Learning from my LS430 experience, I bought LS460L with regular suspension & RWD. Hopefully this turns out to be reliable as well. Even if I have to change shocks or bushings, it wonn't be as expensive as air.
I researched LS430 and then bought custom luxury model 9 years ago. I haven't paid any more than what I would have paid maintaining Honda accord. I probably paid less.
I think I avoided major expense by avoiding air suspension. Air suspensions are unreliable across the brands. They just have life and replacement cost is 10 time more than regular shocks. $100 for regular shock vs. $1000 for air suspension. Both are wear items. On an average LS regular shocks have lasted longer than air but it doesn't matter, when it is time to replace your regular shocks will be 10 times less expensive.
Only things I had to do on my LS430 was replace alternator (and that is also unusual repair for LS430) and 2 door actuator motors for $6 each and my time. My mirrors don't work as well but I have learned to live with the them folded open all the time. I spent some money on aftermarket wheels but that expense is optional.
LS430 has been the best purchase. Even now it will fetch a good price in a private sale. Dealers are offering only 4500 to 6500 in trade-in.
I spent more on my previous 7 series BMW just in 1 year than 9 years of LS430 ownership.
Learning from my LS430 experience, I bought LS460L with regular suspension & RWD. Hopefully this turns out to be reliable as well. Even if I have to change shocks or bushings, it wonn't be as expensive as air.
03-29-18, 07:39 PM
#21
Intermediate
Thread Starter
It's not always about the cost, someone said you gotta pay to play... well I'm on my second fully loaded ls600 and I for one consider that I paid and played. Agreed stuff do break and there no way around it. But even if you could afford the air suspension the context in which it could catastrophically fail make it incredibly inconvenient when it happen. At their core I think they are a bad design, there should be a hard limit on how low your car can drop when they fail. My original caution was not about the air being necessarily too expensive, but the fact that it will not fail gracefully and will be a huge pain when it happen. And trying to get out of that situation (ex: try to move or tow the car) could inflict even greater damage on the rest of the car. And if you break something else some stuff can be repaired but can never be brought back to original condition no matter how much money you throw in the repair. Plus there is the dealer experience when you naively believe that this is an insurance that you'll get the most qualified personnel to work on your car. Most of the time they are unfamiliar with their less common model and will do half the repair. I heard more than once on this forum people saying that the dealer told them that the suspension cannot be adjusted/calibrated, which is totally false. Last time I called for my transfer case oil I was being told on the phone that my car had no transfer case... and don't even get me started on how difficult it was to explain them that for 2008-2010 you need the magic ll80 special oil as per the service bulletin (by default they will put whatever oil they have in bulk). So even if you throw money at the dealer most of the time the repair still won't be done right. Each time something break you need to factor all this beside the cost of the repair, which end up building this big annoyance when something happen.
03-29-18, 08:18 PM
#22
It's not always about the cost, someone said you gotta pay to play... well I'm on my second fully loaded ls600 and I for one consider that I paid and played. Agreed stuff do break and there no way around it. But even if you could afford the air suspension the context in which it could catastrophically fail make it incredibly inconvenient when it happen. At their core I think they are a bad design, there should be a hard limit on how low your car can drop when they fail. My original caution was not about the air being necessarily too expensive, but the fact that it will not fail gracefully and will be a huge pain when it happen. And trying to get out of that situation (ex: try to move or tow the car) could inflict even greater damage on the rest of the car. And if you break something else some stuff can be repaired but can never be brought back to original condition no matter how much money you throw in the repair. Plus there is the dealer experience when you naively believe that this is an insurance that you'll get the most qualified personnel to work on your car. Most of the time they are unfamiliar with their less common model and will do half the repair. I heard more than once on this forum people saying that the dealer told them that the suspension cannot be adjusted/calibrated, which is totally false. Last time I called for my transfer case oil I was being told on the phone that my car had no transfer case... and don't even get me started on how difficult it was to explain them that for 2008-2010 you need the magic ll80 special oil as per the service bulletin (by default they will put whatever oil they have in bulk). So even if you throw money at the dealer most of the time the repair still won't be done right. Each time something break you need to factor all this beside the cost of the repair, which end up building this big annoyance when something happen.
I am curious on your dealership experiences though. Your location is QC? Is that QC as in Quebec Canada or Quebec City? I know the LS sales rates up there are in double digits vs US where they sell thousands of them. I wonder if that accounts for the seemingly clueless support you're getting up there. Its a unicorn.
03-29-18, 08:30 PM
#23
Absolutely, and it's also people choice to heed this advice from someone who lived it's inconvenience first hand. The ls600hl only come with air suspension so there nothing to choose here here unless you buy another car. I'm just sharing my experience here to help people make an enlighten choice and learn from the experience of others. To be honest I wouldn't have though a car with air suspension could get so low that the underbelly would rub on the ground. Suspension have been know to be the Achilles heel on this gen of the ls and consumer report also list the suspension as unreliable. At least with springs you have some kind of fail safe and your car cant bottom out like when it's on air. In the end we live and learn.
03-30-18, 05:13 AM
#24
Intermediate
Thread Starter
Agree on most of your points, it would be nice if they had some sort of failsafe in there. Might mean you get rickshaw level of driving, but at least its belly isn't dragging.
I am curious on your dealership experiences though. Your location is QC? Is that QC as in Quebec Canada or Quebec City? I know the LS sales rates up there are in double digits vs US where they sell thousands of them. I wonder if that accounts for the seemingly clueless support you're getting up there. Its a unicorn.
I am curious on your dealership experiences though. Your location is QC? Is that QC as in Quebec Canada or Quebec City? I know the LS sales rates up there are in double digits vs US where they sell thousands of them. I wonder if that accounts for the seemingly clueless support you're getting up there. Its a unicorn.
03-30-18, 05:56 AM
#25
Intermediate
Thread Starter
Point taken. I for one can tell and feel the difference btw coil and air so If i had a choice I would always take air knowing fully well the issues if things go south. I'm not saying that because I can afford to fix whatever on the car all the time but because I'm committed like that and do all my own work when possible. That saves me lots of money to put towards a major repair if it comes up which hopefully it won't. I've never seen a Lexus bottomed out and sitting for days on the street but I've seen enough 4matics in these situations and just figured that the owner is out of warranty and could not afford the repair at the moment. By the way did you take the car to a Lexus dealer or Indy shop when it all went bad?
03-30-18, 08:07 AM
#26
I feel your pain, I just figured if MB has a way to deal with it then I'm sure Lexus had one too. In your situation like those 4matics that I saw the dealer was not an immediate option . I'm not sold on the dealer either since I've had some experiences where the dealer tried to shaft me. They tried to get me to replace the transmission on my 400 when there was clearly A TSB that stated the ECM would throw a code for the speed sensor. I even had A MASTER tech tell me my 400 didn't have a 1 touch sunroof. He had to go look at old shop manuals to confirm and came back and apologized. We were cool after that though. The air suspension is the 1 thing that I do think about from time to time but it floats over the rough roads so smoothly I'm willing to take the chance.
03-30-18, 09:55 AM
#27
Lexus Fanatic
Having had the car on coil springs and on air, very happy I have the air and IMHO, its well worth the risk and cost. Makes the car feel an order of magnitude more special.
Remember that this sort of failure is VERY rare. If you look back through all the generation LS forums you won't find hardly any references to this sort of failure, and I think it was caused mainly by a poor quality repair by the dealer a couple of years ago.
04-03-18, 07:36 AM
#28
Intermediate
Thread Starter
While doing some research I found a Tesla owner in the same situation and people over there also wonder why there is no fail safe system that prevent the car from bottoming out: https://forums.tesla.com/en_CA/forum...easant-results
04-03-18, 09:18 AM
#29
Lexus Fanatic
Dealer was closed and over an hour and an half-hour from there, and rear bottom was already too low to tow without damaging the car. Brought it to an Indy 5 min from here so I could at least lift the car up and identify the leak. But regardless of the place of service the air suspension design would not have changed, if the compressor cannot supply air to all 4 shock your belly gonna touch the ground. Granted putting the car on the lift made it worse by emptying the two other shock and if I could have just left the car on the lift until the part got in it would have been easier (but now I was monopolizing a whole working area in the workshop so they would not just leave the car here). In the end I was lucky that the compressor didn't failed and only the rear line was leaking, but it got me thinking... what if the leak was in the main line or if the compressor failed ? Maybe the dealer have a way to handle this better and have the equivalent of those "buffer" Mercedes use but the problem is when the failure occur you are not at the dealer and the "Hell" part is getting it there comfortably sitting on a lift in case of a suspension failure (by your own power or a tow truck). But like I said my situation was the rear only so I could still move without dragging the bottom until I got to the workshop, but what if all 4 shocks would have lost air while I was away ? Thus my concern.
04-03-18, 09:34 AM
#30
While doing some research I found a Tesla owner in the same situation and people over there also wonder why there is no fail safe system that prevent the car from bottoming out: https://forums.tesla.com/en_CA/forum...easant-results
Some things just require inspection and pre-emptive replacement as there is no good way to sort it after the fact. Again, just something to ponder. Don't start a flame war.