Better Beaters - Building Cars and Daily Drivers

 Sometimes, you just have to do the work. Where have I heard that before?

The rear air springs, after a bag-ectomy.
 Old, but they were still functional.

Sometimes, need  results in taking immediate action.  All it takes is a shot of gumption!

Because that thing ain't gonna fix itself!

An almost real time adventure in car repair.

I was finally successful in selling the Riviera, but that still left one additional vehicle that I needed to sell to re-gain some badly needed additional space.

It would either have to be the '06 Mustang, or the '06 Navigator.

I've already discussed the reasons that it would be a very bad idea to sell the Mustang. 

No matter how much I like the Navigator, and I do, I just don't have a real need for it. I've got my F150 to haul big dirty loads, and I've got my Flex to haul clean stuff and loads of passengers. Unfortunately, the Navigator won't fit in my garage, which makes it difficult to shuffle around when I want to drive one of my other garaged vehicles.

So I decided to start diving the Navigator again, prior to putting it up for sale. Just to see how it was running. It had been sitting since I brought my '46 Plymouth home from Southern Ca. That was over four months ago. I started it up and went down to my local Costco to put some gas in it.

It sure seemed to be riding awful rough.

This is what the left front wheel looks like on the bump stop.
The right wheel looked even worse.

Uh Oh, I could see that the right front fender was riding mighty low on the wheel.  

There must be something wrong with the air suspension. 

ARRRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!

Now I'll have to do something about this before I can sell it!

That bottom edge looks a bit tattered.

Thoughts of just listing the Lincoln on CL immediately vanished. Nobody is going to pay anything for a crippled old Navigator. Even though it is very clean, runs great, and has very low mileage of 118,000 miles. I could just list it as a mechanic's special for a grand, and take whatever the interested mechanic might offer me. It probably wouldn't be much.

Or I could just call up Kars 4 Kids and donate it. Just to get rid of it. That's probably what a normal person would do.

The poor Nav would just be sold to a junkyard and be torn to bits.

I know that it sounds kind of silly, but I love the car too much to see that happen. If I had the extra space, I would keep the Nav, even though I don't really need it. Even my Wife thought that the Nav deserved a better fate than that.

But Man, I figured that it would be a nightmare to diagnose the problem, let alone repair it. It seemed that it would be a big complex job to repair the system. I really had no idea of what was involved.

I don't even have a shop manual for the Navigator, so I did what has often worked out better in the past, and started looking on the web for repair videos.

I found several very good videos detailing the repair.

Two were produced by Arnott, a well known company that sells replacement suspension parts, and another few were produced by a group named the Garage Boys.

The air springs are part of a large shock absorber assembly, that resembles a McPherson strut, and they can be replaced from the shock assembly once it is removed from the vehicle.

The cost of replacement springs varies quite a bit. Arnott would be one of the more expensive alternatives. I went to my local NAPA parts store for a quote. The fronts were approx. 260 bucks a piece, the rears were 350 bucks, each. That's well over 1,200 bucks just for the springs.  I took a look at Rock Auto and the prices were lower, but then my Wife started looking on Amazon. A set of no name springs, obviously sourced from China, (but really isn't that where everything comes from?) were 59.99 for the front and 62.99 for the rear. All four with tax, and free delivery, totaled 255.22 dollars. A much easier pill to swallow.

How about letting a shop do the job?

How much would the shop charge for labor for a job like this? Well, first of all, a shop is going to sell you the parts at their price, and probably charge the flat rate for the labor, which I'm guessing would be at least 200.00 per hour. Probably at least two hours per wheel position, so that's about 1,600 bucks just for labor and with the more expensive parts factored in. The cost of  which could be as high as  13-15 hundred dollars, for a theoretical total of around 3,000 dollars.  That's just a guess, but the local Ford dealer charges 250.00 an hour for labor. 

They have done some work for me on the Flex, but luckily it was covered by the extended warranty.

This makes the repair uneconomical for almost everyone, unless the owner has a long term commitment to keeping the vehicle. Three Grand! That's pretty much what I expect to sell the Nav for, after repairing it. 

Worn down to the steel cords.

I watched the videos every day until the units arrived. There was no need for special tools or procedures. The Garage Boys were pretty direct, they just replaced the one offending spring, only changing the O rings that were supplied with the spring. But obviously, if one spring is worn out enough to spring a leak, the others won't be too far behind. My Wife had suggested that I do that minimum repair, but I didn't want to sell the Nav to some guy who would shortly suffer another crippling failure, and I had ordered replacement springs for every position. In several of the videos the guys explained that they got about  ten years of service out of the original springs.

The front air springs looked to be the originals, and factoring in the relatively low mileage of the vehicle, I'm pretty sure that they are the factory springs.

In the past, I have replaced conventional coil springs on large American cars. I've replaced the lower suspension arms on my '96 Mustang which also features traditional non captive springs. I've also replaced the springs on McPherson strut equipped cars. 

All of these situations requires dealing with stored spring energy. The spring is always compressed enough to have quite a bit of energy waiting to be unleashed. They have to be restrained with various spring compressors, and the operation is very dangerous, it requires a lot of care. The potential for serious injury cannot be understated.

My first finished refurbished
air spring strut.

The advantage of air springs is that when they are deflated, they have no stored spring energy. They are also lighter and shorter than coil springs. In fact, the most difficult aspect of the job was jacking the car up and removing the heavy 18 inch wheels. Especially since I was doing the job by myself. 

The right front position was obviously riding on the bump stops. Looking at the bottom fold of the spring, it was obvious that it was worn out. It looked like a tire worn down to the cord! 

This was going to be a big job, but there was no need to rush. I also had to be careful not to injure my tired old body.  My back can't take that much strain. 

I did the right front first. 

A thing of beauty. One down, three to go.

After replacement I started up the car and the spring inflated and the car was back up at the proper ride height. Success!

The right front fender standing proud.

I'm not going to go into a lot of details of the actual procedure, as you can just watch the videos if you are interested or planning a similar repair job.

After doing one replacement, I picked up a few tips that made the job go easier and faster. In fact I made a little list that I posted on the car as I did the work.

Since I was only jacking up one wheel position at a time, I found that the lower arm would not drop down far enough for easy replacement unless I unbolted the sway bar link. I fought with that lower arm for almost an hour before I realized that!

I learned a few things during the first R&R.
I posted this note on the Nav's fender in plain sight.

I also forgot to replace the spring clip that retains the solenoid to the spring before I bolted the strut in place. That took another 30-40 minutes of finagling to get the clip on without pulling the strut. That's why I taped the list to the fender after the first replacement! 

One issue was that there was still residual air pressure in the left spring since it hadn't been leaking. Since I was going to replace the spring, I just drilled a hole in the bottom edge of the rubber spring, releasing the trapped air. It worked like a charm, and made removal simple. I did the same for the rear springs!

Left front spring in place.

Familiarity made the second replacement go quite a bit faster.

After I replaced the left spring, I started up the car and it rose to regular height after a few minutes.

It was Wednesday and I planned to start the rear positions on Thursday and Friday. However, I got an early start on Thursday and quickly replaced the left rear. I decided to at least jack the right rear and remove the wheel before I had lunch. Once I had the wheel off, I figured that I'd loosen the bolts attaching the strut and then eat lunch. "Why not just pull the shock and then replace the air spring after lunch?" Once I started, I didn't want to stop. I was on a roll. I R&Rd the air spring then just decided to finish the job. Then I ate lunch. It tasted better than ever.

After finishing the left rear strut I was on a roll!

After the right rear spring was R&Rd,
 I was done with the heavy work.

As I mentioned, I hadn't done anything to reset the air ride system after I replaced the front units, They started working all by themselves. 

This time after lunch, I started the car and it didn't rise, nothing appeared to happen. I could hear the compressor start to come on, but the rear sat there on the bump stops. I had partially supported the weight of the vehicle before starting the engine, to make it easier on the compressor. I imagined that it would take longer to fill two completely empty springs. 

I wondered if there was a procedure to reset the system. I turned the suspension switch off, started the engine then switched it back on, and didn't see any change. Then I turned it off and restarted the engine. I did this several times with no improvement. I ran the self check on the dash info set up, and it declared that the air suspension was "OK." Then I decided to disconnect the battery and leave it that way for at least an hour. I reconnected the battery and decided to come back to it on Friday morning. I was disappointed, but at least all the heavy work had been done. I figured that I might have to do some of the diagnostic tests that I'd seen on YouTube. 

On Friday morning I hooked up the battery charger and let it run for a couple of hours. The info set up reassured me that the air suspension was OK. I started up the engine and was going to let it run for 10-15 minutes. I heard the compressor come on. Then I heard a noise in the rear and felt the vehicle tremble and start to move. I let it run for another five minutes then got out to check the rear wheels. The car had gotten off it's haunches and was sitting at proper ride height! 

Needless to say, I was extremely happy. All my hard work had paid off. As a DIY guy, this is the ultimate pay off. Dealing with an unfamiliar system, there is always a little bit ( or a lot!) of doubt in the back of the mind that wonders if things will turn out right. I always hope that things will turn out, but you never know. 

My mascot, Wally Gator has a new spring in his step!

Now I just have to get the car smogged for sale, clean it up a bit, take some new photos, and compose the CL posting. 

Hopefully, things will go as easily as I typed that sentence!