"Check Air Ride" on startup... not the compressor, not the relay. Help?

BAD97LSC said:
no, you dont know the story, originally the car was supposed to be stored at my shop until brandon came down, rich was gonna drive it up and leave it at my shop, brandon could have wiped off 4+ hours just coming to me instead of all the way down to ft lauderdale, its was all planned then before i knew it, brandon was here in florida and no one said anything to me until i get a text from rich saying brandon was on his way to my shop, 2 days went by and brandon was back up north! so oh well i didnt lose sleep.

now, onto the problem here, why dont you stop guessing or letting others guess and start with the obvious here, get under the car and unplug the compressor, the harness has 4 wires in it, a white, blue, black and red. the red is pos and black is neg for the compressor power, get 2 wires and a battery and put power dirrectly to the compressor to see if the terd even comes on, if it does, take the same two wires and touch a pos wire to the white wire, and a neg wire to the blue wire and see if the solenoid clicks, if it doesnt click, change the compressor, if the compressor doesnt run smooth and fast, change the compressor, i put my money on the compressor, specially if its an arnott.
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Thanks. It's rainy and awful here at the moment but first chance I get I'm gonna head over and give this all another go. I appreciate all the help so far.
 
LaserSVT said:
Yeah but at the same time you cant ask a friend for a favor and then get mad when he doesnt do an extra favor and eat into what little time he has. Good way to no longer get favors.

Yeah it would have saved a lot of time effort and money but on the other hand Brandon didnt have time to work at Jamies shop for 8 hours fixing and replacing stuff.
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Bingo.

I'm little annoyed with how much :q:q:q:q I've gotten from most people involved about not doing this or that... I did this for a friend on my own time.

Only reason the car wasn't picked up sooner is because of finals week, formula SAE comp, and generally being stupid ass busy while in college and working.

Sucks that I didn't see Jamie, would have liked to but honestly I wanted to sit on the beach with a good looking girl and drink some beer and have a good time for a few days while in Florida before coming home and working more.

Yea Jamie could have helped fix the issues... but I'm fairly confident in my abilities and I just as well could have, can, and most likely from now until me or Darren dies or the car is wrecked will fix everything and anything on this car.

I wanted to put a new door on in Florida, Darren was insistent on NOT driving a multicolored car... and I had no good way of transporting a door and two fenders back to MN with out ghetto ass solutions.

So unless you really know wtf really happened with everything you can probably STFU... I'm generally down to help anyone anytime with anything but even I have my limits and a cute girl in a bikini and cold beers is probably going to win 9 times out of 10.
 
yeah but hanging out with a cute girl and having to go back to the hotel to beat your dick like it owes you money isnt really all that fun, now had you got laid, you could tell all of us to stfu, but you didnt, so you cant, the only ass you get is when your finger tears through the toilet paper, now go fix the car mr confident big head.
 
Alright... here we go:

Every sensor has been swapped out with a known working unit from Stack's car. No change. Relay has been swapped with a known good unit from stack's car. No change. I can hear all solenoids open when power is applied. I tested the compressor as per Jamie's instructions. Ran fine, but could not hear a click on the white/blue. Plugged in a different known working compressor that was tested the same way and passed. Still got a message.

Here's the odd part. The relay is triggered by grounding a dark blue with yellow wire, which kicks the compressor on. I verified this in Stack's car by shorting this wire to ground on the gray connector, and sure enough the compressor kicks on. In my car, shorting this wire does nothing. And by this, I mean I made sure it was working in that car, took off the relay, and ran the same test using the very same relay. I did realize it had a little fray in it so I clipped and retwisted, and took a meter to it and made sure there was continuity between the module side and relay side of that wire. And there was. I made sure the other side of it had continuity with ground. I shorted the thick wires that go to the relay, and sure enough the compressor kicked on. It feels like the problem exists between the module and the compressor... but I have proven it isn't the relay and I've checked continuity in all the wires.

I know I'm a new guy to this air suspension business, but I can't help but feel like this is a much stranger issue than 99% of what I've read through on here regarding the system.
So that's where I stand... If I apply voltage where the relay is supposed to, the compressor turns on. If I ground the wire that's supposed to engage the relay, nothing happens. But it somehow isn't the relay. So... thoughts?
 
BAD97LSC said:
yeah but hanging out with a cute girl and having to go back to the hotel to beat your dick like it owes you money isnt really all that fun, now had you got laid, you could tell all of us to stfu, but you didnt, so you cant, the only ass you get is when your finger tears through the toilet paper, now go fix the car mr confident big head.
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I wish I could have gone with and made Brandon stop by just because I feel like based on the posts I've seen, we would get along well.

Don't be too hard on Brandon. He's got a lot of other stuff going on, and a lot more profitable work to do. Besides, it's given me an opportunity to really learn about the system having to do most of it myself. Like I said, I'm just glad he was able to get the car up here one way or the other.
 
Hankyman240 said:
So that's where I stand... If I apply voltage where the relay is supposed to, the compressor turns on. If I ground the wire that's supposed to engage the relay, nothing happens. But it somehow isn't the relay. So... thoughts?
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I had a hard to diagnose problem with my red Mark a few years ago.

I measured 12 volts at the power wire to the relay, but the compressor still wouldn't come on.

Then I ran a separate fused 12 volt (big gage) wire directly to the relay plug and it worked.

I think somewhere in the wire between the power distribution box and the relay, the wire was bad, it would still show 12 volts, but couldn't handle the current required by the compressor.

I needed to drive the car then, so I put a proper terminal on the jumper wire on the battery side, I'd already soldered the proper fuse in line, then I soldered the other end on to the pig tail of the relay plug (I just cut off the original 12 V supply wire).

I always meant to go through the harness and replace the wire properly, eventually, but it worked fine like that for years, and I never got around to it.:)

I'm not saying that this is your problem but it's an easy thing to try, run a good power jumper wire (with fuse) to the relay connector and see if it works, either by grounding the trigger wire or just keying the car on.
 
billcu said:
I had a hard to diagnose problem with my red Mark a few years ago.

I measured 12 volts at the power wire to the relay, but the compressor still wouldn't come on.

Then I ran a separate fused 12 volt (big gage) wire directly to the relay plug and it worked.

I think somewhere in the wire between the power distribution box and the relay, the wire was bad, it would still show 12 volts, but couldn't handle the current required by the compressor.

I needed to drive the car then, so I put a proper terminal on the jumper wire on the battery side, I'd already soldered the proper fuse in line, then I soldered the other end on to the pig tail of the relay plug (I just cut off the original 12 V supply wire).

I always meant to go through the harness and replace the wire properly, eventually, but it worked fine like that for years, and I never got around to it.:)

I'm not saying that this is your problem but it's an easy thing to try, run a good power jumper wire (with fuse) to the relay connector and see if it works, either by grounding the trigger wire or just keying the car on.
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Thanks Bill,

I guess I should have phrased my post better. The 12V going to the relay is okay. I can jump the two pins (one's black/yellow and the other is purple, if I remember right?) and the compressor will fire right up. But when I ground the blue/yellow that's supposed to trigger the relay, nothing happens. I've verified continuity in this wire but I guess it could still be crap... I mean, it was frayed up by the module so if there's any wire in there I don't trust it would be that one. My next thought is sticking a nail in the wire right by the relay side and hooking that to ground with a good jumper wire with clips, effectively bypassing that whole stretch of wire. I already tried something similar, but I was using drillbits and just a length of wire instead of clips and I wasn't sure how good of a connection I was getting. I also did verify that the (black?) wire next to the blue/yellow had continuity with ground. It just feels weird that it could be the problem because relays need very little power to activate. I just don't know what else it could be.
 
Oh, I thought you already tried the trigger wire at the relay connector.

Yes, I would try that next, I know that's a pain though, because you can't easily back probe that connector.

If you had a spare connector with just short pigtails coming out of it, that would make troubleshooting much easier. I've tested relays connected to compressors out of the car using a bunch of jumper wires with alligator clips into the relay though.:)
 
Brilliant! I think brandon mentioned he has a full spare wiring harness... I wonder if he will let me chop it up.That's a great idea, thanks!
 
i say spring it too, f--- the air ride. all the air ride is , is a huge headache money pit when it fails, and whoever says coils kill the ride quality is full of :q:q:q:q, yes it is different, but doesnt kill it. i would never take air over my coils never, i'll out handle and out corner any stock mark on air by a huge margine!
 
You guys will figure problem put it's nothing that can't be fixed get wiring diagram and start tracing it will hit you in the face when you find it

And if all else fails coil is always a option although would be my last resort

Maybe you guys know of a mark viii with a known good air ride try your donor parts (module, relay, height sensors ) and verify proper operation and check wiring at each solenoid make sure all are operating individually and make sure all wiring is good to them from module
 
Stick with it you will get it.
This thread has a lot of great info.

There has to be a reason it won't trigger your perfect person to find it, helping others in the future.
Your not the first one to have this problem.
Most would have gave up and sprung it.
87TTOPGT420
They have Stacks Mark in the driveway to try parts from and put suspect parts on.

Bill you are da man!!
 
Darren Bill is saying exactly what I said yesterday... just because there are volts doesn't really mean much.
 
kustomizingkid said:
Darren Bill is saying exactly what I said yesterday... just because there are volts doesn't really mean much.
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I know... I just like the idea of using a completely seperate connector. That way I can run a completely separate power, ground, etc, bypass most of the system in the car, and figure out wtf is actually going on.
 
As a quick update to where I am with this... I talked with Chicken about a plan to at least inflate the bags so I could drive the car. I jumped power to the solenoids 2 at a time (front/back) at the module connector to open them up and had brandon get under the car to jump the power wires at the relay plug to turn the compressor on. The car has been holding steady in 4x4 mode since Tuesday and I've put 100ish miles on it since then without any more trouble. Definitely just a temporary ghetto fix, but at least I have a car I can drive again.
 
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