ok so now i go outside to start my car and it's dead, jump it and it's perfect the rest of the day till i park it back at the house and it's dead again. I have been hearing the little air compressor under the hood kick on when the car is off alot lately and so i'm wondering if it would be ok to take the fuse out for it while i'm not driving it and it's parked. or is there a way i can rig a switch to it or can i get a switch to manually lower and raise car?? i'm pretty sure there's alot that goes into replacing everything for this system. it would be really awesome if there is a way to hook up switches for each air shock to the air compressor or shocks and be able to manually raise and lower to my liking........
One of the guys had exactly this same problem. I think it was 72CapriceEstate. Just check his posts (mid to late 2009) from the Member list - probably use Find Threads by... Can't recall how he solved it, but it wasn't replacement.
Yeah...you can put a switch on there but you still should find the leak. If you don't fix the leak the car will settle down and when you hit the switch it will run until it comes back up to level. If you are thinking of using this system to raise and lower different sides and to jack up the rear of the car etc it won't work like that. It is a leveling system so, if you want to have it go way up & down, you need a different system and stronger pumps etc. I had the same problem with my 88 Electra wagon and have it now with the 96 Cappy. I fixed the Electra and now need to fix the Cappy.
well this morning i went out and looked at it some more. found that there is no air hose at all coming off the air compressor. there is no trace of any air hose at all where there should be. so i think that perhaps the air shocks have been replaced with something else and they just didn't unhook the compressor. so for now i just completely unhooked the wire harness to the compressor. i'll look more into it when i can get up on a lift at work. maybe they just replaced the old shocks with ones that don't hook up to the compressor? I know i've had a hard time looking up any info on this system online. But what i did find is that usually this was a system that only the dealer could fix and that nowadays they just put diff shocks in them and remove the self level system completely.
Again...what I tell everyone that gets a "new" car.....GET the Factory Shop Manual(s) off eBay. You will understand your entire car with that.
Truer words have never been so well put! I found my owner's manual and at the back, there's an order form to order the factory manuals. If I was dealing on a new car, I'd get the salesman to throw them all into the sale. Just no way to have a road machine and leave it to some AAA jockey to blindly butcher a car he's never seen before. You can bet that most of the young pups today, haven't seen 30 year old hood more than 5 times. Here's the books buddy, follow the bouncing ball!
I've even left the FSM in with the car for the service guy if I take it in, with the appropriate pages stickied.
Your a brave man Andy, or in Winnipeg you still have old school grease monkeys. Out here, you never bring a car from our era into a shop, unless the the guys can plug it in to a p'utor they have no clue as to what the hell ....
If you are talking about the 1988 Buick (your post didn't specify) the circuit should have a timing function that disables the compressor a few seconds after the key is turned off. It should not be coming on when the key is not turned on, so there's a problem there in any case. Obviously the missing air hose shows that the car's been messed with by a previous owner, so chasing down those "improvements" will be a challenge. The air lift system in your Buick has the compressor under the hood and a sensor attached to the frame above the rear axle. A lever on the sensor measures ride height and controls the compressor and the fill and empty valves. Unfortunately there is only one fill and one empty valve; the air line tees at the rear axle to reach both shocks. It's not possible to individually control them without adding valves and completely rewiring the system. There are aftermarket air ride systems sold for just that reason.
