You will have to excuse me but I know very little about this car. Here it goes, going to the gas station the other day, it made a sudden fluid leak. The fluid appears to be the fluid that adjusts the suspension (is that ACE or something else). The reservoir (cap with the car with two arrows on either side) is empty. My father (the owner) does not care about any optional feature that is now failing. I am desperately needing to use this vehicle to get to school next week.

Is it safe to drive with this suspension fluid gone? I imagine the pump for this feature is belt driven, could it seize and cause problems? Thank you for your time to answer this.
-
Jon

 

NO you cannot drive it with no ACE fluid, you will seize the pump.
It takes standard power steering fluid.
Unless your dad is paying to fix the seized ACE pump go borrow a bottle of power steering fluid from his garage.

 

In an attempt to find an answer to my question, I came across this link: http://www.landroverclub.net/Club/HTML/ace.htm at one point it says

"If you break the lines while driving you will not notice anything abnormal. So LR incorporated a red flashing light and a buzzer.... If the light goes red and the buzzer goes on, you lost so much fluid that the pump can be damaged. Theorhetically the system closes the lines before this and switchs the pump to bypass. In this case you will notice much more body roll but you can still drive."

I appreciate your response Spike, I am certainly not trying to challenge anyone, I am simply trying to find the truth. If this link on ACE is factually inaccurate I hope someone will point that out. Also the system gushes ACE fluid, so putting some PS fluid in wont help much.

 

I do not know if the ACE system will go into "bypass" mode if there is a major leak, but I doubt it will.
The ACE fluid it is leaking is power steering fluid.
Can you find the leak?

 

why don't you just find the hose that is either disconnected or cracked and repair it. will cost you a few dollars and 30 mins.

 

Tell your father that is a $1700 option from the factory and it needs to be fixed before you drive it any more or as Spike mentioned, the pump will sieze up in a few minutes of driving sending metal through out the entire system thus killing it forever.

 

Thanks for the responses. It sounds like it is a bad idea to drive it, I have made arrangements for a rental car. The D2 is going to the shop and will likely have the pump removed. It is an interesting feature, but a bit of a headache if we don't normally use it.

 

As I don't have ACE, I could be wrong, but isn't it used nearly every time you turn a corner at speed?

 

Yes, you cannot turn it on or off.

 

Man, there goes my rhetorical question...