I've recently purchased two new EAS compressor rings of eBay for circa £20 but they appear to be so tight the pumps struggled to turn. I've got numerous pumps so at first thought it might be a weak motor etc but after swopping parts over have come to the conclusion the rings are just ever so slightly to big. Any recommendations for the best rings out there?
I've always used the kits from X8R, not had a problem with them. You get the seal and sleeve with those.
Since rebuilding my pump it has now become very noisey and can clearly be heard from inside the car. I've rebuilt a few over the years and they always seem to get louder after being reconditioned. Thoughts?
Did you renew the 3 rubber mounts / feet ? I know mine are pretty flattened and probably cause additional noise.
Did you put the washers on the mounting posts the right way up? Bottom ones have concave face down while the top ones have the concave face up.
Blanco and Gilbert, many thanks for your suggestions. I didn't do either so will investigate. Tks
Wasn't quite sure where to put this, in here or in the What have you done... thread, but it seems relevant in here.
I went to Paris and back yesterday and had a little EAS problem which caused me to miss my ferry and not get home until 3am this morning. A couple of weeks ago I started to hear my EAS compressor (which normally I can't) and it seemed to run for longer than it should too. As it was last treated to a refurb about 8 years ago, I figured it was due for another but, as I had two spare compressors that had recently been fitted with new seal and sleeve, it was much quicker to bung one of them in and put my original on the shelf to refurb as and when. Before putting it on the pile, I checked it and found it could just about manage the 150 psi needed but was struggling. That was a couple of weeks, or around 1,000 miles ago.
Fast forward to yesterday when just before arriving at my destination just outside Paris, I noticed that it seemed to take an awfully long time going back up to Standard height after sitting at Motorway for many miles. Having left there, I got the dreaded beep, beep, beep, EAS Fault and it dropped to the bumpstops. Not fun at around 70 mph but thankfully French motorways are far smoother than ours. Pulled into the first service area to investigate. Compressor was running but unscrewing the inlet filter and it didn't seem to be sucking much. Whipped the nuts off to lift it, disconnected the pipe to find it may have been pumping something but not a lot, I could easily stop the flow with my finger. Time to break out the Schrader valve fittings I've carried around with me for years waiting for just this kind of situation. Then realised a problem, I'd only got 3 of them in the car, I'd been using one for testing a valve block so was still on my bench at home, along with my tyre pump.....
Being able to pump up 3 corners wasn't really an option, so had to think a bit more. The services had an air station and knowing I had a couple of valve blocks at home with the blue pump to block pipe on them, out with the Stanley knife and slice off the fitting that went to the pump and fit a Schrader valve to that. That should let me fill the reservoir and, as long as I used the Inhibit switch to stop it dropping at speed and then using air to rise back up again, that should get me home. Air line was one of those where you tell it what pressure you want and it should fill to that. Unfortunately it didn't. As there was no pressure there to start with, it wouldn't put any in. With Dina poking the flat tyre button, the best it could manage, after feeding it with 4 Euros, was 0.75 bar. That didn't do anything for it. Fortunately, the shop had a tyre pump. The best it could manage was 5.6 bar (around 82 psi when really I needed 150) but, after running it for 30 minutes the car started to rise. Let it get to Standard height and set off. That lasted for around 10 miles as it hadn't fully reached Standard, it had got far enough to stop the dash light flashing but it was still low so still trying to get to the target heights. As there was insufficient pressure available, it wouldn't rise any further so beeped at me and let all the air out that the pump had spent so long putting in and dropped me to the stops again. It was actually quite drivable at up to 60 mph on the billiard table smooth French motorways but I knew there was no way it would be even remotely comfortable once I was back in the UK. So a different approach was called for.
Instead of feeding air in to fill the reservoir, I figured that if I could feed it in to the valve block directly, it wouldn't be quite so hard on the pump that had just cost me €59.95. Disconnected the air line to the reservoir, put a Schrader valve on a short length of pipe and shoved that into the now vacant hole in the valve block. Switched on the compressor and almost immediately the car started to rise, slowly but up it came. Problem here was that it was going to need feeding with air quite regularly but, fortunately, the pump would just fit in the gap behind the LH headlight and in front of the air filter box. Cable in through the passenger door and into the fag lighter socket. Figured that all I needed to do was lock it in Standard and as soon as the light started to flash, shove the plug in to lift it up again. Good in theory but in practice, by the time the light was flashing, it had dropped too much so would bring up the error again and let all the air out. So I had to get a bit more scientific. As the Nano was already plugged in (to clear the multiple faults as soon as they came up), set that to show the target and live heights. Figured that as long as I could keep them fairly close, it should stay happy. And it did. Even with it locked in standard, it was dropping a little fairly regularly (probably as it was running from 5.6 bar pressure and not almost double that) but as soon as I saw the live numbers start falling, I'd plug the pump in until they were back up to target. Ran like that for around 320 miles and got home.
It did beep and come up with an EAS Fault once more after running for at least an hour and a half but it didn't drop. The error was 'Pressure Switch not changing state', so it does monitor that which may well explain the random errors some people have had when there doesn't really seem to be anything wrong. If a compressor is getting tired and can't managed 150 psi, then the pressure switch will never close to shut it off, so would trigger this error. I had a 60 mile run to do this morning so put my other spare refurbed compressor on. Car was still sitting at standard but obviously the reservoir was empty as it had been disconnected. The Nano was still plugged in, so set it to monitor what the compressor was doing. After starting the car it ran as you would expect and after 8 minutes the pressure switch closed and it switched off. It remained off for my 60 mile journey at Motorway height and only cut in again when it took air from the reservoir to raise the car back up to standard when I came off the motorway. So that answers the question of how often should it run in normal circumstances. If you've got a decent compressor, no leaks and the car remains at a constant height, about never, or at least not at all in an hour. So I learnt a lot including how the hell do people drive around in cars that are lifted? I kept it locked in standard height and it felt decidedly unstable cruising at 80 mph. Just goes to show how much thought went into the design and why it lowers at speed.
But why did a recently refurbed compressor fail after only a couple of weeks? Pulled the top off it this evening. The sleeve was perfect but the seal had split around the base where the ring goes to hold it in. Pulling it apart and I found it looks like I caused the failure. When I had prised the ring off to remove the old seal, I had nicked the piston so there was a sharp burr on it that had cut into the seal when I had put the new seal and ring back on causing it to split. Just got to hope I didn't do the same on the one that is on it currently. I think I better carefully refurb my original one and put that back in.......
Wow, quite a good story. I know what the bump stops feel like!
Interesting story & an ingenious solution. I think that I would just have driven on the bump stops as despite the order not to exceed 35mph it is possible to do 50-60mph although it nearly shakes all the fillings out of your teeth. I've only had to do one journey on the bump stops when it went into fault mode & I was about 60 miles from home & while uncomfortable it is possible.
The story was also a bit unsettling as I am driving back to the UK from France today. Happily it's not far from our place to Saint-Malo to catch the ferry & only 220 miles in total back to our other home in North Essex. I have previously driven back to the UK catching the ferry at Caen with EAS FAULT & all the lights flashing but that time the suspension stayed up although in an unrelated episode the cooling system boiled over while we waited in the queue for the ferry. It was a transient EAS fault that as I recall Richard cleared with his Nanocom (or possibly we used EAS Unlock). I have a brand new Nanocom that hasn't been used in anger yet but fingers crossed it won't be needed. I must get a set of Schrader valves to keep in the car.