When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
I took off a front and rear air Maxpeedingrod strut and measured them. Below I have them pictured next to the Dunlops coil struts that came on the vehicle. At their extended lengths, they don’t look too far off, but you can see they’re off. The fronts need to be longer. I compressed them with a tie-down strap and measured their compressed lengths. It looks like both the fronts and the rears compress to roughly 17.5” (444mm). That’s about the correct length for the front, but too long for the rear. I still don’t want them for the front given the wheels are up against the fender wells when compressed. I want to be able to drive the vehicle if the air suspension fails. I’m pulling them off the truck. I’ll put the coils back on and save up for the OEM air struts.
I’m going to tackle the fault codes next. I think this truck has rear differential lock. Here is a picture from the rear passenger side wheel well. Can you help confirm if that motor is the wheel differential lock? I hear it can get jammed. Is there a way to figure that out without the iiD? I ordered one by the way, put it on a CC, just waiting for it to be delivered. I don’t know if it’s worth tearing into it just based on suspicion.
List your tire size. As I said, you should not have rubbing unless they are way oversized. If so, you can get strut spacers to put on top them. And that is not the rear diff locking motor, not really even sure what that is. You need to look on driver side for a large round connector or just crawl under it and take a pic. The locking diff is larger due to the clutch package.
It has 265/60R18s on it and calls for 255/60r18s. I guess it has slightly wider tires on it, but not tires any larger in diameter. Perhaps I wasn't able to compress the struts down enough using a ratcheting tie-down as much as the weight of the vehicle can, thus lowering it further. I know the tires are rubbing against the fender well. I had the vehicle in the center of my 2 car garage when installing the air struts, but had to move the vehicle over to one side to make way for my wife's car. It was rubbing and created some pretty significant scuff marks on the fender well with just moving it out of the garage 10 feet and back. I would like to make these struts work, but obviously the rears are too long. As for the fronts, perhaps I'll invest in some strut spacers. The SYA ones sold by Lucky 8 are not cheap. For that price, I might as well buy air struts that fit. That may just be what I do. Perhaps I need the strut spacers too. It sounds like Lucky 8 advertises them for this reason.
Yeah, you should not have any rubbing at all. Something is wrong. I would have to guess alignment is way off. I run much larger than that, and wide, and have zero issue.
Thanks for the replies and for your expertise. I'm going to return the Launch Creader and buy the GAP iiD tool. It is expensive, but it's worth it. I'm just disillusioned by how much everything cost these days. I guess I thought I could get away with a cheaper / generic scanner. I agree I should invest in the right tools and save money, time and effort in the long run. Though it may be a month or two and working a few extra hours of overtime before I can buy it. The time to fix the vehicle and register it since I purchased it has basically expired so I registered it non-operable. I was feeling pressured to get it running quickly, but now I have a whole year to figure it out (hopefully it won't take that long). The previous owner did have it registered with the coil suspension on it, despite the instrument cluster looking like a christmas tree. Here in Colorado you need emission / inspection every two years for a 2005, and I don't think they will fail you for the suspension faults if it has been converted to coils. Something new must have broken since then that I have to figure out. The iiD tool should help a lot.
The truck is solid, 159K, lots of power, drives well (when driving). It appears to have resided in dry climates, no rust. No apparent history of off-roading. No accidents. Properly maintained. For a 20 year old car, its in great shape. I'm super impressed with it and the engineering.
The Maxpeedingrods air struts model numbers are RTD501090 and RNB501250-V2. They're advertised on eBay, Amazon, Aliexpress, etc. They're advertised as fitting the LR3, but your probably right in that they don't. I reached out to them for support and I'm still waiting to hear back. I told them I purchased them 2nd hand and that all I'm looking for is for their support, not to return them. Hopefully they will be honest and tell me if they're correct for the vehicle or not. Its difficult finding the OEM max and compressed lengths for what the struts should be. Maxpeedingrods replied that their front struts are 613mm extended, 486mm compressed, and the rears are 579mm extended, 409mm compressed. Google AI says the fronts should be 548mm extended, 447mm compressed and the rears should be 539mm extended, 367 compressed. Based on this the Maxpeedingrods front struts are 39mm(1.5") longer at their compressed length then what they should be. This doesn't make any sense. The wheels are resting hard up against the fender well in the front so they are definitely not longer then they're supposed to be. Most likely these are shorter. Now the rears calculate to be 42mm(1.65") longer than they should be at their compressed length. This makes more sense since the back is resting way too high when on the bump stops. Here is a picture of the car resting on the bump stops.
Interesting idea wondering if they were swapped. I'm going to investigate this. It would result in this issue. I installed them based on the diameters of air dampeners and their relative lengths (wider / shorter in the back, narrower / longer in the front). If the struts where associated with the wrong air springs it would make the rears wider / longer and the fronts narrower / shorter, but if the rears were compressed all the way and fronts were extended all the way it could result in the correct appearance. Excuse my naivety, but will struts stay compressed when unloaded? I'm used to coiled struts which are always extended due to the spring. This theory would have required whoever (factory / prior owner) to have built / rebuilt them incorrectly (associating the struts with the wrong air springs). I'm not sure if the struts are interchangeable in this way. It looks like I'm going to be taking these things off the truck anyway. I'll find out.
As DakotaTravler said, I have bigger issues than the air suspension. I did find mild corrosion on a few connection of the CJB and cleaned them up. I didn't think it was that bad. I don't think I cracked it open to evaluate the inside though. Ugh, I guess I'll do that again. My hands were pretty tore up after that job. I haven't yet taken the center shift assembly out to evaluate it. Are there electronic in their? I was able to successfully test all the switches and lights in the assembly. The truck had a busted out sunroof from a hail storm that I already replaced from a junked LR3. The prior owner had the truck covered with a tarp, but I cannot be assured water didn't get in. I'll check this out.
I'm so thankful for the suggestions. I got to find the source(s) of all these faults. I just don't know where to look.
The shifter has a PCB mounted on the side and if its had any water leaking from above like sunroof left open then it can get corroded and short out which mine did, replaced the whole shifter plus a short wiring loom that connects to it which fixed my issue of no sport mode/command shift and a permanently illuminated D on the shifter.
if you are handy with a soldering iron, I revived my height swtich/shifter/terrain response selctors with an alcohol scrub abd a resolder of the corroded pins I found. At the very least a good scrub with a nylon bristle and isopropyl can do wonders.
I resolved most of the faults resulting in the air suspension not engaging. Ended up that I had some corroded wires in the passenger side floor board that needed to be soldered and shrink wrapped. The only codes I'm getting now (sort of) are these "passive ignition start coil circuit" and "low frequency coil" error which I hear everyone has and doesn't cause an issue. It would be nice to know what the cause of that is though.
I disassembled the Maxpeedingrod air struts and I'm 100% sure someone rebuilt the airstruts and swapped the struts with the wrong air springs (nice work BLawl, you were right). For whatever reason someone rebuilt them in the first place, I have no idea. The struts in the front air springs compress much further than the ones in the rear. And the struts that were in the rear air springs don't compress as much. I also found missing and torn spacers and o-rings when disassembling. Long story short I was able to rebuild them and they now correspond with the correct lengths for the fronts and rears. So.... I put them back on and low and behold the car is sitting on the bumpstops again. Ugh. Now I'm getting an fault "C1A00-1D (AF) Control module - General electrical failure - circuit current out of range. I'm trying to do a calibration using the iiD tool, but I can't even get the front drivers side wheel to come up. I press and hold the up arrow. The compressor turns on, the front valve block clicks, but the front left never comes up. The compressor eventually turns off, I suppose due to overheating. I can't even proceed to the next step of the calibration. Is it due to the suspension being too low (on the bump stops). It seemed before that if I jack the car up, the fault would resolve, though that was a different suspension fault code. Was I suppose to perform the calibration with the truck jacked up a little or is having it sit on the bump stops okay? I haven't received this new fault code before. Does it mean that I now have another electrical issue?
I'd start with the fuses. I believe there are three. A small 5amp, small 20amp, and a large cube type 60amp.
if your compressor is running, the 60 should be fine. I had a compressor pop the 60 because it was worn out (and fuse was wrong style anyways).
General electrical failure sounds like a module isn't responding. Maybe one of your wire repairs isnt working? Probably worth checking all the valve blocks to make sure nothing came unplugged. If you go to service>suspension>test valves, you can click individual corners and hit up and down and listen for the solenoids in the valves to click.
when you say one of the corners doesn't come up, does that mean it's the only one that doesn't? Or are you trying to run a calibration?
best to not run a calibration until things are holding air.
Better process is to start vehicle up, go to live data>suspension and monitor compressor temp, gallery pressure. It may take a while to fill the tank and struts. Working pressure is somewhere around 240 psi, and it typically shuts compressor off at 260F and let's it cool down to 220F before starting to pump again.
Most repair guides recommend jacking the car to about normal height while things are filling but I think that is to avoid the system shutting the EAS down entirely thinking something major went wrong. You may have to use the "activate EAS" a bunch if it's sitting on bump stops with a completely empty air system.
FYI, I may have gotten some of the iid tool menu name/options wrong, just going off memory
I've revived the system from dead and found that lifting the height to something normal helps get EAS in the mood to actually try to work.
Otherwise the above info is spot on. In particular don't get too discouraged if the pump shuts off before it fills the resovoir , it will cool down and get it the second time like Blawl said.
