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The coils are dead reliable, no question they don't fail. They do not ride as well as Air. They do not tow as well as Air. Off Road they are good but Air is better as the truck functions as intended. Also parking garages aside, when on the trail and there is a downed tree, being able to dump the suspension and creep under is awesome. Also way better than having to pull down fuel cans etc to make it.
The EAS can fail and it will. However if maintained you can expect it to do it's job without issue.
My 2 cents. Just got a P300 Monday. Was worried about this as well as I’ve had Range Rover discos LR4 etc. I decided on coil and I’m very please with how this truck drives. I like the highway driving and slower around city. Not quite as smooth but not drastic difference. The johnson link way just seems less than ideal if you actually want to wheel and build this car up. That’s my end goal and I know there will be very reliable and more than adequate coil suspension systems soon. Good luck with your decision don’t think you can really go wrong either way.
My 2 cents. Just got a P300 Monday. Was worried about this as well as I’ve had Range Rover discos LR4 etc. I decided on coil and I’m very please with how this truck drives. I like the highway driving and slower around city. Not quite as smooth but not drastic difference. The johnson link way just seems less than ideal if you actually want to wheel and build this car up. That’s my end goal and I know there will be very reliable and more than adequate coil suspension systems soon. Good luck with your decision don’t think you can really go wrong either way.
I think your use case is the primary reason JLR is offering coils on the Defender. Certainly, the cacophony of global critics' voices on the New Defender versus the Old became quite fixated on air suspension taking the places of coils in a pure overland / remote off-road vehicle.
Cross post from the automatic entry height thread.
I get why the coils make sense to people who want to hardcore wheel it or want old school goodness whatever.
THAT SAID, as someone who has already replaced all four coils on my < 50k mile Jeep (because even with the tow package they were getting soft) I wouldn't assume coils never need work either.
I have toyed with the idea of a second D, maybe a D90 and there's a decent chance I would then go P300 and 18" steelies and coils.... but man the air suspension is fun to play with. What I really like about the air suspension is how stout it is with a load (like with my wife's Ducati hanging off a hitch carrier). The D didn't even KNOW it was there, it just leveled itself out and completely took the load without the slightest noticeable change in ride and handling. I cannot imagine the coils would be that good.
You know, bit of personal preference here. I have had to replace coils and leafs on my Rovers before, so no they are not trouble free. I have had two with air suspension, which where essentially trouble free. I am a geologist and my last one has conservatively, 40K off road miles. The only thing I have ever had go wrong is one of the level sensors got a personality. Easy enough to troubleshoot: Go to the 4X4 info page look at the suspension animation, there are red blocks. The red blocks are what the level sensor is sending. If one is out of place, it is bad. The Proline replacements are $22 and take a whole 10 minutes to replace. I have never had one of the air shocks go bad, get a hole or a line leak and I go to some pretty wretched places. We don't find stuff in easy to get to places.
On the other hand, my 97 Defender ST had to have two of the four coils replaced and it only had 60K on the clock when they went bad:
11-09-2021, 09:27 PM
