Battery Drain or Suspension?
 

My issue is a chicken or the egg scenario: if I leave my LR4 sit for 5-7 days, the battery is completely dead to the point I need to use the emergency key to open the door. This occurs regardless of temperature as it has happened in hot, cold, and mild temps and the battery is not old. The suspension has also been giving me faults on occasion, especially when it has sat for a few (2-3) days and the front is lower than the rear. Where should I start looking first? Is there an electrical fault causing a battery drain and then giving me suspension faults? Or is my suspension issue needlessly draining my battery?

Wilybyrd
'10 LR4
'24 D130

My guess is both.

You say the battery is not old, but that’s also not new and discharging a battery to dead over x amount of cycles will kill it., AGM is the best, we put an H8 and it fits just barely.

You have a leak in the front. Vehicle wakes up every few hours and does a self diagnosis. Finds it has a leak and starts leveling out the other corner, repeat until vehicle is on bump stops and battery dead. Good luck

Sorry for the late response... I hope you already solved it.

I don't think the problems are related. Search for "parasitic battery drain" for steps to diagnose which system is using the battery.

For the front suspension, I've done this process twice.

1. Can you hear a hissing from either of the front struts?
2. Inspect your bushings. Do they need to be replaced?

1a: The easiest way to diagnose is to wait until night time when it's quiet, then raise the car into off-road height, then turn off the car and listen carefully. In my experience, if you have a leaky strut you will hear a hiss. If you can hear the hiss, then you should replace the strut. It's recommended you do both sides at the same time, but it's your car - do whatever you want. One other thing to try... I had one strut that I didn't hear hiss until I jacked up the car. When the strut extended there was a loud hiss.

The strut replacement is fairly easy. Literally pull it out and put the new one in. It doesn't take any special tools other than jack stands and ratcheting wrenches (I want to say 14mm on top and 24mm below). You can get decent after-market struts pretty cheap.

2: If your bushings are worn then you might consider replacing the struts and control arms at the same time. The control arms are more painful to do but with new struts and control arms the truck will feel like a brand new ride. I would recommend you get a ball joint separator and blaster spray before attempting repair. There are horror stories of people cutting their eccentric bolts out with reticulating saws. I didn't have to do anything like that, but it was a huge pain doing it on the floor with a single guy. Find a buddy and it will go much faster. There's plenty of videos on YouTube about this.

1b: If you don't hear a hiss from the struts, then I'd start with the valve block. It's in front of the passenger tire inside the wheel well. It's a low cost part, and easy to get to, but if you're losing air only in the front then you should service valve block or replace it. You can buy an o-ring set and do it yourself, but the replacement is like $40, so not worth the time in my opinion. There's a decent chance that this might fix your problem. I had a LR3 previously with similar issues and it was the valve block.