P38A Rear Air Spring Problems

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You can get a proper little pipe cutter for the nylon pipe, good for speed on a big job. You don't need one of them, use a new stanley blade and gently slice it through, what you are trying to avoid is crushing and deforming the end which will happen if you use snips.
On your new bags poke something thin , less than 6mm diameter anyway, down the collet to gauge the depth, easier with the bag off the car, mark the new bit of 6mm pipe with a marker pen to this depth. You'll see then that you've pushed the new pipe far enough in to the collet. There are 2 O rings in the bag collets and they need a good shove to get past them and home so lube them too. The push fit fittings only have 1 O ring and go in much easier. The bulge on the original air bag pipe is great for helping push it home but you probably will be cutting that off?
You may struggle getting that new pipe in and think it's there when it isn't that's why marking the pipe depth is usefull.
 
tank93 said:
So after successfully replacing one of the blend motors yesterday, today I started on what I thought would be an easier repair replacing the rear air springs as the back end keeps dropping overnight, removed the timer relay, front stays high the back drops down. Anyway, how wrong I was thinking this would be easier then the blend motors! Firstly I could not get the pipes out of the top of the airbag, they would not budge on either side. Have read numerous guides before starting and thought it be easy but not mine. Anyway eventually I managed to get them out but the pipes are damaged at the end, am I ok to just cut away to damaged area, any advice please? See attached pics, I really don't know why they were so difficult to remove as all the guides I have read and videos on YouTube people seem to remove them within seconds. Then had a job actually removing the bags as they were stuck at the top, ended up getting a crow bar and with lots of effort they finally popped out! Only part of the job which was easy was removing the 4 pins, they came out with any problem at all. Thanks for any advice, appreciate it.
View attachment 313851View attachment 313852View attachment 313853
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Arnott bags now have nuts on rather than push fittings. You have to remove the bag, drop it down through the hole, undo that nut you have mashed, very gently unprise the little brass ring that wraps around the pipe (if you're going to put the bag back in for whatever reason) and then the pipe should be free. Arnott themselves say it is "more reliable" than the push fittings, although none of us have ever heard of a pipe popping out. What it does mean is that it is hard as **** to change the bag if one is split while you're off-roading somewhere, which all of us have heard of. That's progress for you. You can replace the Arnott fittings with the usual push-fit ones.

Probably loads of airlines off scrappers available, especially considering how many have metal spring conversions.
 
Flossie said:
You can get a proper little pipe cutter for the nylon pipe, good for speed on a big job. You don't need one of them, use a new stanley blade and gently slice it through, what you are trying to avoid is crushing and deforming the end which will happen if you use snips.
On your new bags poke something thin , less than 6mm diameter anyway, down the collet to gauge the depth, easier with the bag off the car, mark the new bit of 6mm pipe with a marker pen to this depth. You'll see then that you've pushed the new pipe far enough in to the collet. There are 2 O rings in the bag collets and they need a good shove to get past them and home so lube them too. The push fit fittings only have 1 O ring and go in much easier. The bulge on the original air bag pipe is great for helping push it home but you probably will be cutting that off?
You may struggle getting that new pipe in and think it's there when it isn't that's why marking the pipe depth is usefull.
Click to expand...

I have a pipe cutter which should help, as you say using snips is a no no as the end would be deformed. Good idea with measuring the depth, I will certainly do that to give me a guide on how far the new pipe needs to go in for a solid fitting. Yes correct I will not have the benefit of the bulge on the pipe to aid fitment into the air spring as I will be cutting past the bulge. Hopefully I wont struggle too much, installing the new bags, connectors/pipe cant be any worse than the issues had removing the old bags!!! :D
 
Grrrrrr said:
Arnott bags now have nuts on rather than push fittings. You have to remove the bag, drop it down through the hole, undo that nut you have mashed, very gently unprise the little brass ring that wraps around the pipe (if you're going to put the bag back in for whatever reason) and then the pipe should be free. Arnott themselves say it is "more reliable" than the push fittings, although none of us have ever heard of a pipe popping out. What it does mean is that it is hard as **** to change the bag if one is split while you're off-roading somewhere, which all of us have heard of. That's progress for you. You can replace the Arnott fittings with the usual push-fit ones.

Probably loads of airlines off scrappers available, especially considering how many have metal spring conversions.
Click to expand...

I am not sure what bags they were, they went in the bin and bin men came this morning, I thought I saw Contitech on them but cant be 100% sure. They were in a bad state, all the bottom rubber was heavily cracked on both sides hence the rear end dropping overnight. I honestly do not know how you could access that nut with the pipe connected. I don't think you could drop the bag enough to get to the nut, maybe I am biased because I had a bad experience but its a terrible design IMO and does not take into account the problems you will have if you have to remove/replace them in the future.
 
tank93 said:
I have a pipe cutter which should help, as you say using snips is a no no as the end would be deformed. Good idea with measuring the depth, I will certainly do that to give me a guide on how far the new pipe needs to go in for a solid fitting. Yes correct I will not have the benefit of the bulge on the pipe to aid fitment into the air spring as I will be cutting past the bulge. Hopefully I wont struggle too much, installing the new bags, connectors/pipe cant be any worse than the issues had removing the old bags!!! :D
Click to expand...
Leave the pipe into the air spring long to give you a better grip and cut it to length after fitting it.
 
tank93 said:
I have a pipe cutter which should help, as you say using snips is a no no as the end would be deformed. Good idea with measuring the depth, I will certainly do that to give me a guide on how far the new pipe needs to go in for a solid fitting. Yes correct I will not have the benefit of the bulge on the pipe to aid fitment into the air spring as I will be cutting past the bulge. Hopefully I wont struggle too much, installing the new bags, connectors/pipe cant be any worse than the issues had removing the old bags!!! :D
Click to expand...
I replaced complete front length from block to driver side front. Cut pipe with a dremel and lightly used a pencil sharpener on ends to clean up and put a very slight camber to help go in. I put a bit of spit on mine as lube. Touch wood been fine so far.
 
tank93 said:
I am not sure what bags they were, they went in the bin and bin men came this morning, I thought I saw Contitech on them but cant be 100% sure. They were in a bad state, all the bottom rubber was heavily cracked on both sides hence the rear end dropping overnight. I honestly do not know how you could access that nut with the pipe connected. I don't think you could drop the bag enough to get to the nut, maybe I am biased because I had a bad experience but its a terrible design IMO and does not take into account the problems you will have if you have to remove/replace them in the future.
Click to expand...

Contitech will be Arnott.

Only fitting at the top of the bag slots through. You undo the R clips top and bottom, bottom.prises out and then the top will drop down and you can access the nut to release the pipe. I told one of the Arnott guys in the NL it was a stupid idea but as far as I know they're still using them.
 
Grrrrrr said:
Contitech will be Arnott.

Only fitting at the top of the bag slots through. You undo the R clips top and bottom, bottom.prises out and then the top will drop down and you can access the nut to release the pipe. I told one of the Arnott guys in the NL it was a stupid idea but as far as I know they're still using them.
Click to expand...

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. I dont think there is enough length on the pipe to be able to drop the bag down far enough to be able to access the nut but I might be wrong, the space is really tight. Just cutting a small length off the pipe (just past the bulge) is enough to make the pipe too short to fit into the bag so being able to drop it down to access the nut doesn't sound feasible but it might just be me not understanding correctly. One thing is for sure, I would never buy Arnott, not that I bought them originally as they were on the car when I bought it as its the first time I have replaced them. With design like that it creates a problem I would say for even a highly trained competent technician who works on cars day in day out. I totally agree with your comments that it was a stupid idea, someone from Arnott should try to remove a fitted bag equipped with this nut design!
 
Morning All,

To close this thread down, fitted two new Dunlop rear bags over the weekend along with some new pipe and connectors and all appears well, the back end has not dropped.

Thank you to all who took the time to reply and provide advice, greatly appreciated and gave me the confidence to tackle the job.
 
tank93 said:
Hindsight is a wonderful thing. I dont think there is enough length on the pipe to be able to drop the bag down far enough to be able to access the nut but I might be wrong, the space is really tight. Just cutting a small length off the pipe (just past the bulge) is enough to make the pipe too short to fit into the bag so being able to drop it down to access the nut doesn't sound feasible but it might just be me not understanding correctly. One thing is for sure, I would never buy Arnott, not that I bought them originally as they were on the car when I bought it as its the first time I have replaced them. With design like that it creates a problem I would say for even a highly trained competent technician who works on cars day in day out. I totally agree with your comments that it was a stupid idea, someone from Arnott should try to remove a fitted bag equipped with this nut design!
Click to expand...

You won't believe this but the official Arnott advice is to just cut the lines and replace the airlines when you replace the bags. Talk about OTT.
 
Grrrrrr said:
You won't believe this but the official Arnott advice is to just cut the lines and replace the airlines when you replace the bags. Talk about OTT.
Click to expand...

I actually feel slightly better reading this because at the time I felt like a complete numpty not being able to remove the airline from the bag (and subsequently ended up butchering the pipe), as everyone was telling me it was such a simple thing to do, push in and pull the pipe out. Crap design from Arnott, I think they will lose sales over it, I will certainly never order an Arnott airbag, cutting the pipe is not the right answer, go back to the collet design...............which from what people tell me never had a problem in the first place! All this nut does is give grief and problems, as I found out. Anyway I hope if nothing else this post will warn people about Arnott bags and this nut design they have come up with!
 
tank93 said:
I actually feel slightly better reading this because at the time I felt like a complete numpty not being able to remove the airline from the bag (and subsequently ended up butchering the pipe), as everyone was telling me it was such a simple thing to do, push in and pull the pipe out. Crap design from Arnott, I think they will lose sales over it, I will certainly never order an Arnott airbag, cutting the pipe is not the right answer, go back to the collet design...............which from what people tell me never had a problem in the first place! All this nut does is give grief and problems, as I found out. Anyway I hope if nothing else this post will warn people about Arnott bags and this nut design they have come up with!
Click to expand...
I have Arnott GenII's on one of mine, 13 years old now and still look like new. The have the standard collet arrangement for the pipes, I got them very cheap. For the project car it was Dunlops as Arnott's are now silly expensive but I wouldn't buy any air spring with compression fittings.
 
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