2003 Mercedes e320 130,xxx miles. I work on Mercedes and other German cars all the time. When it comes to air matic I have very little knowledge or experience. The issue started 6 months ago I got a visit work shop suspension malfunction. I grab my star laptop to see what's wrong and there is no faults. Fast forward 3 months and it came on again. Same outcome, no faults. After that the malfunction started to appear 5 times a month.Past 2 weeks it's come on every day. But no faults are found. My driver rear doesn't sit at proper height its always a little low. When I raise the car everything works fine except the rear driver. It doesn't go to full height. It's sits a little lower then It should. THERE ARE NO AIR LEAKS. Another thing I noticed past 2 months that's happens more and more air matic keeps purging and now it sounds turboed. I'm not sure if my suspension solenoid valve is bad, my level sensor or both. Sometimes the driver rear works fine What do you guys think is wrong. FYI I never got a red warning. Just the regular suspension visit shop message. With the driver rear being low. It doesn't get low to the point it can't be driven. At most it sit around 1/2 or slightly more. When car is raised it sets around 1/2 to 3/4 Inch low.
Since the system the airmatic is almost 20 years old I'm just going convert to spring and strut system. It extremely easy and straight forward to do. Being realistic its only a matter of time till all the most or all components start breaking. Since I'm keeping car till it dies I'm just gonna spend the 1,400 on spring and strut kit. Long run it's cheaper. Even if I replaced the whole air matic system there is no guarantee it will last. Hit a big pot hole or something else and you can damage it.
I really think it was a clog in the solenoid valve or dirt and or grim in/on the level sensor. The driver rear is working fine now. In matter of fact this is the first time it was at it's proper height since I got the car over a year ago. It always sat a little low but nothing like it was past few days. It seems like the issue fixed itself. Regardless Im still going to convert to springs in future.
