Air suspension rebuilds ?

[_Tazman_]

:D

Hi folks, after a bit of a dispute with a known re-conditioner, I've decided to embark on the rebuild myself, and to my surprise ( after having worked for decades on normal spring steel suspensions ), the air ride system is easy to repair !

VW charge I think, at last check, about £1000 per shock & will not reuse the old damper...

Re-conditioners charge usually a whopping £600 per side.

After stripping my old unit down, it's evident that the dampers never get touched & the only replaceable part is the airbag assembly, which interestingly comes anyway from China.

I'm in the process of negotiating a set of front bags ( as my old RHS front will be re-sold as rebuilt on the web later, pretty much for what it cost me ).

Basically, for about £200 you can rebuild your own air struts, so get out & don't be afraid to have a go yourself, taking the air spring off the car, takes only 2hrs at most & the srtip down of the damper assembly is about 40mins with basic tools !

HTH, pics will follow of course !

:D

[_Tazman_]

couple of quick pics of the stripped & prepped strut :D

29585

and one of the old airbag that has a small tear in the sleeve ( soon to be binned ! )

29586

for WIW for you chaps, the supplier has agreed a price of £150 per bag, although it'll take a few days shipping.

Much cheaper than the horrendous £600 prices on the web from other suspension rebuilders ( whom use the same suppliers ! most probably ! )

Hope this helps save some of you some pennies.

Cheers

;)

[Cameron Savage]

Hey,

Have you had any luck? Any advise would be much appreciated.

Cheers.

[_Tazman_]

Yes mate, all sorted.

I fixed my OEM strut & have found the suppliers in china...

£160 inc' customs delivered to the UK from HK.

30 mins to strip & swap over the airbag assembly.

Even basic leaks can be repaired for the sake of a few "O" rings....

If you can remove the strut yourself from the car ( which is about 2hrs work, an hour if I don't stop for a cuppa ), then you'll save wasting your money with a futile visit to the *******. And don't delive any rubbish about the shocks needing new controllers... they DON'T.

There are a few Uk rebuilders... I'd avoid Aerosus, they were crappy & the workmanship was awful.

I'll always rebuild myself from now on.... so easy !

Regards.