Hello,

The left front air strut is leaking badly from the top, it was an RMT rebuild which I have given up on after few failed purchases.

Thought I would give Maxpeedingrods a try, bad idea as well. Installed the replacement strut only to find that the valve it came with is a 4mm and will not take the front airline which I believe is 6mm.

Paid for shipping to have a replacement shipped and that one too also has a 4mm air valve. Looks like their supplier is shipping wrong units.

Question: it is acceptable to swap from the old strut 6mm air valve with the incorrect valve on the new unit?

 

Hm there are other airline plug ins available in plastic or metal, also for water hoses. There might be some to connect between different airline sizes
so you could try without changing anything on the airstruts installed system and leave the 4 mm system installed.
The other way would be to take out the retention valve below out and have a look and try if the original fits then use the 6 mm where the airline fits.
mean while I am looking for a picture for the connector plug ins

 

Those work push fit connectors . Just try to find 4mm to 6 mm

 

Thank you Petz, great advice.

Found a 4mm to 6mm converter as suggested on amazon. Ordered it along with a 4mm air line to do the conversion. Finger crossed this works out.

 

Just leave the 6 mm hose lenght as is do not cut shorter

 

I would try the RMT air valve first. Should fit fine. I think all the clone air springs work.
The MaxxspeedingRods product is disappointing. Almost ordered a conversion set from them.
The customer support scared me off. Would not answer basic inquiries, and the few responses gotten back were nonsense.

 

Well, since I had ordered the parts from Amazon figured worth a shot to install the strut with the 6mm to 4mm conversion.

During installation the arrangement looked highly questionable with regards to being a no leak situation but it has surprised me so far. Zero leaks.

Real test will be to see if the car maintains ride height overnight.

I agree on the customer support experience with Maxpeedingrods. The insisted on 15% restocking fee when I kept telling him that the part ordered was correct, but the part recieved was not.

 

Hope they work out.
If I keep the XJR a conversion is in order. Tired of fighting air springs on a Jaguar. My 2005 A8 has two originals that RMT rebuilt front and completely stock on rear. Trouble free. Purchased in 2013. Bilstein can build good air springs.

 

Those push-to-connect fittings are fine for testing, but beware of using them as a permanent solution.

These fittings are only rated to a maximum working pressure of 150 psi. The normal operating air pressure in the air spring bladders is 7 - 9 bar / 101.5 - 130.5 psi., and maximum "full bump" spring pressure at GVW is in the region of 20 bar / 290 psi, according to the Jaguar and Wabco literature. The push-to-connect fittings are claimed to have a proof pressure of 435 psi, but my own experiments suggest that their connectors will break loose from a plastic air tube if the pressure rises to much over 150 psi.

Here are the specs from the Utah Pneumatic website:



Cheers,

Don

 

Don, i just wanted to report back that you were 100% correct.

Vehicle was in garage on ramps for variety of engine bay tasks that needed to be done for months. Once wrapped up, the weather here is now over 100 F, the amazon air lines started to melt and burst due to engine bay heat. Ordered new line from rmt which addressed the cheap melting air line issue, but the push to connectors started to pop exactly in the manner you raised the concern about.

I will order the correct size air valves, replace them to eliminate the conversion and report back.

Someday the super v8 shall drive again. Hope it is soon.

Frank

 

Frank,

Sometimes I am sorry to have been right.

Thank you for reporting your experience! It may help save others from the potentially dangerous situation. Imagine if you were traveling at highway speed when the air suspension had a sudden loss of air.

Please give us an update when you've installed your new parts so we can all learn from your experience.

Cheers,

Don

 

so, out of pure curiosity, on RMT website looking for pressure valve connector fitting i noticed that they were also selling union connectors to patch air lines. https://rebuildmastertech.com/jaguar...ion-connector/

i figured let's order the pressure valve fittings and a higher PSI handling Straight Union Connector. https://www.zoro.com/parker-metric-m.../i/G305394122/

if that fails, I will install the correctly sized valve and call it a day.

Been testing the new connector for couple of days, no issues so far. It has been 110+ degree so it has been stress tested at high temps.

 

"Imagine"? Whom, here doesn't have it as actual MEMORY?

First few times it happened, extreme cold of ice & slushy interstate, dark of night?

I thot it was "a feature, not a bug" .... so the big feline could ambush snow drifts and ice windrows before ever they even knew it was stalking them as prey..



"Grey Market" (Suncore, unbranded, plain black box) front struts are working superbly. Will order the same make for the rears this month.

As to the several boxes of assorted plastic valves, tees, unions, etc. I had laid in?

It gets too DAMNED hot underhood for those. I had repurposed a few of those bits, including two ball valves - to replace the silly screw-plug vent on the heater cicruit bleeder of the L320's 5.0. Discovered that before they get clear to failure, they soften and distort such that the ball doesn't want to turn.

I'll be replacing those with Stainless or Brass.

The plastic ones may end their days controlling flood coolant on a lathe or mill. It IS really fast and easy to rig a custom multi-point coverage array.