I'm trying to use the British Diagnostics WDS-IDS-SDD program (V130) to calibrate the air suspension on my wife's '04 XJ* and need some input and advice.

Has anyone tried to use SDD to calibrate their air suspension? If so about how long did the whole process take?


Also, does it require the use of any other equipment?


In the svc. manuals they show an attachment that is positioned on a couple of the wheel's lug nuts and that has a vertical portion that fastens under the fender at the middle of the wheel opening just above the tire. This is used to accurately measure the ride height. Does this need to be used while 'calibrating' the suspension or when replacing a wheel height sensor?


I've tried both the fill and the calibration routines and while in both cases the front suspension does rise a lot the program never seems to complete before something goes wrong. The rear shocks never go up but the front gets to 17" on the left side and between 16 1/4" to 16 1/2" on the right. At that point they don't appear to rise any more which I suspect is there upper limit. After then driving the car about 2-3 miles the front settles back down to 15+" and the rear stays at a pretty low 13+"

Both programs have run for well over an hour + but don't seem capable of running to completion so what am I missing?

 

Have you read this thread? https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/x...ur-x350-75369/

 

Hi RDMinor,

Cambo's thread will tell you everything you need to know. I can't speak for V130, but I have successfully used SDD V134 to calibrate the suspension on our '04 XJR and on a friend's '04 XJ8. On our car, entering the actual measurements into SDD would not result in the front corners being level with one another; the front right corner was lower than the left. So following Cambo's lead, I "lied" to SDD by entering a false lower measurement for the front right, and by doing that a few times I was able to get both front corners at the factory spec height (386 mm).

It helps if you have a metric tape measure or meter stick, otherwise you have to convert inches to millimeters to enter the measurements into SDD (multiply inches by 25.4 mm per inch).

Cheers,

Don

 

I did a quick re-read but I never get to the screen that asks me to input the ride height as it never successfully completes either the calibration or the leveling.

Should I use the "Air Suspension Pre-Geometry" routine first in that case? If so does that require any thing other than the SDD software?

 

I have a vague memory of running the pre-geometry routine - I don't recall whether you would need a tape measure or not, but I can't think of anything else you would be likely to need. Hopefully another member will have a clearer recollection.

 

The "pre-geometry" levels the out the suspension and set's it to what the ASM thinks is the correct ride height for when you are checking/adjusting the wheel alignment (because the camber changes with ride height), it can't hurt to run it, but the "air suspension calibration" does this as part of the process anyhow.

What exactly happens when you click on "air suspension calibration" ? Please explain it step by step or screen by screen...

 

I'll have to recall from memory as I am currently on my desktop system and my laptop that I use for just Jag diagnostics isn't hooked up and running at the moment.


Once I'm into the recommended area and I run the calibration routine it steps me through the normal section of key in ignition in off position, etc. Once I get through with that par and tell it to run it starts off in what I have to assume is normal by stating.....suspension leveling in process... or something very similar. As that continues I can hear the pump activating every 17-20 seconds for about a 15 second burst of activity and then shut down for another 17-20 seconds. This process gets repeated for more or less an hour and the front suspension will lift on the left front to 17" while the right front will be 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch lower. The rear suspension is never affected during this process.


At some point my laptop goes to sleep EVEN though I have set all the power settings so that should NOT happen. I have the laptop being powered by a plug and not its internal battery so that battery power isn't a concern.


I've run the routines three different ways. The first and third runs were with the motor running while the second time it wasn't as I had a battery charger set to push 6 amps at 12v into the battery the entire time.


My first run was a 'raise suspension' routine that was inconclusive as I aborted it. The program ran for an hour cycling as I described above, the shocks inflated, but there appeared to be nothing happening to the rear shocks and I became concerned that the front air bladders or the pump would be damaged by continuing to try to push more air through the system so after an hour I aborted the program.

My second and third attempts were the "calibration" routine and just like the previous "raise suspension' routine they both ran for an hour or more, never indicated that they had completed or gone to any other step and eventually the laptop went to sleep for whatever reason.

So I appear to have at least two problems. A laptop that won't follow my instruction to stay awake, and routines that seem to run for a hell of a long time without indicating even so much as a progress line to tell me if they're making progress. No fault progress bar, no error messages, nothing but the periodic cycling of the pump and some front suspension activity.


A little background. We had a cold snap that pushed the front down to a recorded height of 12.5" and triggered the "suspension too low" message. That went away after a mile or two but it pushed me to tackling the suspension and finding why it was having so much trouble. When I activated the raise suspension routine it was able to pump the left front to 17" and the right front to within about 1/2" of the left so the pump is working and the bladders seem to be holding the pressure pretty well. I think there's a small leak in the system somewhere but I wanted to try to get the system leveled out and calibrated so I'd have a correct starting point before tracking down the leak(s)


Again, a 2004 early build XJ8 (last 5=20479) so it has four height sensors. I'm using Brit. Diag. SDD with their Mongoose cable and v130. I've also had an un-coded suspension fault message pretty consistently but up until the cold snap no leak down of the suspension.

 

I also have the British Diagnostics system, so in case you haven't thought of this, there are two places you would need set the laptop power options not to sleep. The setup is in a VMWare, which is in effect a XP machine running on top of whatever your laptop is running (my is Windows 7).

The Virtual Machine can have completely different settings than the laptop itself. For instance you could have one set to never to sleep, and the other to sleep after 3 minutes. If either are set to hibernate, that could explain it.

 

Somewhere in the archives are instructions for making a pressure test instrument that is a great way to track down where your problems might be.

It's made from common plumbing parts that you get at the hardware or big box home stores. You attach it to each shock, use your air compressor to bring it to a set pressure, then let it sit overnight, and re-check your pressure. Cheap and easy way to track down a leaking shock.

 

There is something not right.

The "calibrate air suspension" function requires you to start the engine, you are prompted to do this just before the "leveling" and with the engine running you should be able to hear the air compressor running. The car will raise itself up (at all four corners) and then sink down to what it believes is the correct height. You will then be told to turn off the engine, then you have to go around and measure the ride height at each corner, entering the values into the SDD. Once you have done that then it's a repeat, starting the engine, the car raises up and then lowers to what it thinks is the correct ride height, and you measure again. You are given specific instructions on the screen step-by-step what to do...

If I understood correctly, you are not being prompted to start the engine? And in the leveling process front of the car is raising but the rear isn't? Something's not right there...

The whole calibration process from stop to finish takes less than 10 minutes, more like 5 minutes if you aren't playing around with the numbers.

 

You can keep the laptop from sleeping if you just move the mouse every 20 minutes or so.

 

Had made sure that wasn't the case after the first time it did it. That wasn't the cause.

 

I have a couple of such units that I put together about a year a go but am looking for something more functional and permanent.

 

Cambio351, the first time I tried I just ran the raise suspension routine which I did with the engine running even though the directions specified key on position II which I read as ignition on but not running. That ran for over an hour, raised the front and not the rear and as I posted I finally aborted it as I was afraid that the continued pressure would damage either the shock bladders or the pump.


On my second try the next day I ran the calibration routine but with the ignition on but the engine NOT running with a battery charger hooked-up and the laptop plugged into constant power. Again the front shocks were filled with the rear showing no measurable change. After about an hour the system stalled or shutdown as I'm not really sure just what happened since by then it was totally unresponsive.

My third attempt was pretty much a repeat of the second except that this time the motor was running as it had been back on the first attempt. The front rose, the rears did not, and at some point the laptop locked-up or went to sleep again.

Since I had no idea how long either of these two routines would normally run I wasn't expecting only a 10 minute run and figured that as long as the pump was cycling and the front was rising that it was still going through it's normal process.

I spent the day taking the laptop I use and completely reformatting and reloading Windows 7 Pro X64 as a clean install with just an absolute minimum of additional programs other than the SDD program and some various Jaguar programs and data I always keep handy. I did this because I suspect that at least part of my problem is the O/S as it was operating abnormally for awhile.


As you said there's something wrong here and I figure I'll just have to eliminate one thing at a time. Tomorrow I will rerun the calibration routine and check the shocks sooner and more often and make sure the laptop doesn't go to sleep.

 

I had to take a couple of days to completely reconfigure the laptop that I use to work on my Jags as it was not operating as it should. I installed Win 7 Pro X64 and an anti-virus as well as all the Windows updates. To this all I installed was the Brit. Diag. JLR software and the VMware program they include with their release.


To cut to the chase I fired the system up toady after I drove the XJ to town and the "vehicle too low" message came on. We've had a couple of cold nights so that contributed to my problem but I'm convinced it's a leak or an error in the comm. network as the system has been acting up off and on for over a year.

After running the various suspension routines that were recommended. lowering everything, refilling and trying to re-level everything, etc. and having the rear suspension refuse to cooperate with any of it I was getting really frustrated as I was getting nothing by way of a thrown code I could hang a starting point on.

I decided to try leveling the suspension one last time and after about 15 minutes of the pump cycling on and off about every 15 seconds for a short 15 second rest the front had begun to rise but the rear still refused to do much of anything. Shortly I heard a loud whistling sound that indicated a high pressure air leak and it is almost certainly comi9ng from the right rear. It could be a shock bladder or the air line or its connection at the shock itself. Since it was raining all day I couldn't think about working under the car so tomorrow, weather permitting, I'll jack it up, remove the tire, and run the leveling routine again and try to pinpoint the leak.

 

RD... maybe a little off topic sorry but can you just summarize your equipment list for diagnostics... I'm fighting the same battle but I'm trying to use the Autoenginuity system and it doesn't give me access to any of the actuation functions. I can't run the calibration or anything. How did you procure the software and hardware?

 

I'm using the British Diagnostics JLR WDS-IDS-SDD program and their supplied Mongoose cable (v130) with a Dell Latitude E3410 with 4Gb of ram running VMware's virtual machine Brit Diag. supplies it) under Win 7 Pro. It's set to use 2 Gb of ram when in virtual machine mode.


It took me several sessions over a period of time to become comfortable using it but it's a very capable version if you own a 2204 or earlier Jag. I suggest you download the various IDS/SDD training and user manuals that have been posted and exist in the download section of the forum so you can get some hints on how it's set-up.

 

Thanks! I just went ahead and bought the same kit... will hopefully gain more access to the system than what Autoenginuity provides.