I left work early so that I could look into this. 2005 XJR. Air suspension fault warning occurred while driving to work this morning. The beautiful Jaguar ride suddenly turned into something akin to climbing into a washing machine at the top of several flights of stairs and then having someone push me off the top. Front shocks were replaced last year (Three times. That's another story) and seem to be working fine. Rear seem to be the problem now. I can hear a very high pitched air leak at the rear, but cannot tell if it is truly the shock because it's buried up in there. I do suspect the strut because I think that noise would be louder in the center of the car if the block were to blame. Its just that it's an awfully high pitched air leak, much higher than when the front leaked at the strut. The whole passenger side of the car drops if the car sits, but definitely lower in the rear. Diagrams on this site helped me to realize that the rear shocks also have an ECATS sensor, so I have to go through the mess of finding the correct airshock with the sensor connection. Why do so many places sell the air shock without the sensor connector? How on earth would that even work? Anywho, My current question is if it is normal for the entire side of the car to drop when a rear on that side is the culprit? This is with the key off. When the front went bad last year, the car only dropped in the front. I found a youtube video of the removal and installation process for the back strut, and it looks much less complicated than the front... but does anyone recall what size socket is needed to remove the bolt at the base of the strut? Or is that one of those nifty "not quite a Torx" bolts?

 

Got the trunk torn apart. High pitched air leak cycles with the pump and turns into a regular hiss while pump is off. No noise coming from the block. No noise coming from the top of strut (which is definitely where the leak was on the front strut last year). All air leak related noises come from under the car, rear, passenger side... as that corner of the car squats all the way down. It's had a total of seven miles put on it since the air suspension fault warning came on this morning. Appears that the front lowers slowly over time in an attempt to level that side of the car. Alrightly then, off to find the "correct" strut.

 

Hi Portfoliolio,

Sorry for the late reply but it does sound as though the air bladder in the rear passenger-side air spring has ruptured.

I don't recall if the lower shock absorber bolt has a hex or Torx head, but if it looks like a Torx, it is. I'm not aware of any "not quite a Torx" fasteners on a Jaguar (although some of the Torx are female 6-lobe and some are male 6-lobe, and the ECM electrical connector is secured by a 5-lobe tamper-proof Torx screw).

Removing the rear air spring/dampers is easy, but installing the new one is a little difficult because it's heavy and the holes in the suspension tower the air spring studs fit through are not visible while you're trying to raise the unit up into the suspension tower. I figured out that if I put 2-foot lengths of rubber tubing on the two studs that fit through the larger holes and fed the other ends of the tubes up through the holes in the suspension tower, the tubes will help guide the studs into the correct holes as you raise the air spring/damper into position.

Please keep us informed.

Cheers,

Don

 

Photo here:https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/x...acement-66088/

 

Just replaced both rear struts the other week with new Arnott 2891 struts, so now I have all four new struts with lifetime warranty.
The rear lower shock bolt heads are normal, I think I used a 13/16 socket and a large breaker bar on them.