Air suspension swap - front only???

[subyboy]

Hey all!

Well, my left front air strut gave up over the weekend. I managed to make the 5-hour trip home by patching it up with a tyre patch and lots of electrical tape.

Now I'm thinking of swapping over to conventional coilover struts. I'd like to keep the self-leveling suspension in the rear, since that's where most of the weight difference happens. Also, money is very tight at the moment so my question is:

Does anyone know if it's ok to swap the front suspension only (from air to conventional)?

Would there be any issues, handling or otherwise?

Thanks,

Jean

[Legacy777]

I wouldn't recommend swapping just the front. It might be a little difficult, plus could produce unexpected handling characteristics.

 

If you want to try it, you'd have to cap off the air lines in the front. I'm not sure how the computer would handle not seeing the front struts....it may not like that.

[idosubaru]

yes you can do it. remove the front struts and make sure you leave the front solenoid, there's no need to remove it anyway. that will remain closed and be your "plug" for the front air lines.

 

you'll have to see how the rears react. worse case scenario is that you just have to pump them up where you want them and leave them like that and play with them a bit to disconnect them.

 

so you might loose the self leveling set up without playing around with the signals. without the front height sensors (which are inside the struts so you are removing them) i don't know that the self leveling set up is going to work well.

 

if you cross the right wires in the front strut plugs that would probably tell the computer that the height sensors are in the "proper" position up front and retain your rear self leveling set up - you'd have to study the wiring diagram to figure out which wires.

 

probably simpler to swap the rears to coil over or if you really like the air suspension and feel like messing with it you can keep coil overs up front. there's a write up on the XT forum on how to recondition your strut bags for long life. not sure if i posted it here or not but it might be in the USRM as well.