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Old 04-14-2015, 02:42 PM   #1
Dave Bulla
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98 exped, rear air suspension deflated

Hi all,

First post on the forum and I'm in a bit of a fix. Got two broken cars in the driveway and I'm going to be sent off to work related school for almost 3 weeks and I need to get one of them going before Sunday the 19th. The one I think will be less trouble is the 98 expedition with the collapsed rear air system.

I found a really good video on youtube for troubleshooting the control relay. I jumpered the two load wires I think pins 1 and 2 and the compressor comes on and sounds normal. Only thing is, nothing in the back end moves. I'm using a 20 gage wire to jumper and after about ten seconds it is getting warm. In about 15 it's almost hot so I don't leave it in any longer than that. I did get movement in the front when I left it on for close to 20 seconds one time. The video also says to jumper the constant hot load side wire to the first control wire pin 1 to pin 3, with something like a window motor in the circuit as a load. I don't have a motor laying around handy to use so I skipped to the check of the second control wire which is supposed to be pin 1 to pin 4 with a test light. Says it will only come on dimly but mine does not come on at all. However, I suspect the bulb may be too high of a resistance because testing it directly off the battery it doesn't light up very bright.

This has me hesitant to pony up for the $130 relay when it could be the control module not telling the relay to come on but I'm not finding anything about how to test that. I also suspect that there could be a problem in the back end since it never started to raise up when jumpering the compressor to on. No idea of the compressor output or how long it takes to inflate the rear bags from slap empty. Don't know if it would be seconds or minutes. I keep wondering if one of the rear solenoids I read about could be bad. When I disconnected the plug where the rear height sensor ties into the harness, I heard a couple clicks that I guess were the solenoids but have not tested them in any way yet.

As for myself, I'm not much of a car guy/motorhead. I generally manage to fix most things myself though. I've been an industrial mechanic and an aviation mechanic all my life but cars often frustrate me because of the lack of easily available information. Airplanes are far more complex but seem easy to fix in comparison because I can get any information I could possibly want in minutes. I'm also not paying for parts out of my own pocket....

Anyway, any help would be appreciated. Don't really want to do the coil spring conversion if I can help it either before everyone tells me to do that instead. May come down to it though.

Thanks,

Dave
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Old 04-15-2015, 11:36 AM   #2
65comet
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Re: 98 exped, rear air suspension deflated

This is my suggestion for what I would do if I ever came across an air ride Ford that was a deal too good to pass up, otherwise I'd pass on buying it. At the first sign of problems with the air ride, I'd go to the junkyard and get a normal suspension and swap it out. So many others that I know with them end up spending a lot of money and having continual issues that go around like a clock. This breaks, then that breaks, followed by one of these going bad. Here is a link to a first gen expy forum that can help you if you don't want to do the swap. http://www.expeditionforum.com/f42/
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