Air Suspension S.O.S... Broken 500 miles from home!
 

We drove our 2007 Navigator L 540 miles today from Pittsburgh to Outer Banks, NC.

Along the way the air suspension failed. Our Navi has 67,000 miles and it is 7 years old, so maybe it was due to fail. We hit an especially rough section of the Pennsylvania turnpike, maybe the series of expansion joints caused it. I dunno.

I've got my wife and 3 boys (ages 9,7, & 4) with me.

The Navi was fairly loaded, plus we had a bike rack hanging off the hitch with 5 bikes on it. I doubt I exceeded the 600 lb tongue weight, but with the leverage of the bike rack I may have been close.

The good news is I still have some air in the system. My rear end is lower than normal, but not bottoming out. At one red light the compressor was running continually, much longer than normal. At the next light I got a notice on the dash that said "Air Suspenion not functioning" or something close to that. I haven't heard the compressor since.

I turned the system off and left it off for 50 miles, but it wouldnt come back to life when I turned it back on.

Later we unloaded the vehicle but the system still won't work.

Any ideas? I'd love to swap a fuse or hit a reset button, but I'm fearful my Lincoln and I might spend our vacation at the mercy of the local Ford dealer if we are going to have a safe ride home.

Thanks for any ideas!

GPF,
I don't have a quick fix for you. It sounds like a leaky system. But I would recommend taking out the air ride and swap in a coil over replacement. Eibach make a kit for all 4 corners for around $500.

I doubt this is an option fo you now, but I would think about when you get home or the next time you have an issue.

My 2 cents, you are on vacation and the less time you worry about this the better. Find a dealer and bring it in, get a loaner vehicle from them (hopefully) or get them to set up a rental through whatever place they use because it is dirt cheap that way, and go vacation. no need to waste time on the back and forth here.

Winner winner chicken dinner!

That's exactly what we did. The nearest dealership was 41 miles away in Manteo, NC but they had it diagnosed in an hour and fixed in a day. It needed a compressor and the resistor died as the compressor labored, so it got one of those too. Got a rental and got back to the sand, so it all worked well.