I can appreciate tightening the upper arm in the loaded/normal position.

Unfortunately I vaguely remember what's involved as it's been over a year now...

I vaguely remember that with the strut in place I wouldn't be able to access the upper arm inner nuts/bolts, at least with my array of readily available tools. As a work around the instructions note IF reusing the original upper control arm to mark the relative position so you can tighten it back in the correct spot. I suggest that you mark the old arm and body with a reference line. Once removed try to mark the new upper arm at the same relative position, then install the new arm, line up the marks, then tighten it in place. (I personally did not do this and very likely torqued it slanted too far downwards)....

I'll see how long it lasts Duralast rubber parts (upper mounts for Mercedes) do not last long from experience, but I don't have to pay for replacement. AutoZone provides lifetime warranty similar to FCP Euro...

 

If car nit started for long time and shocks not maintained for long time too, there are small leaks. So over long inactivity, car will slam.
when you open car door with fob in sight. Car will activate ecu to detect ride height given set settings.
When ypu turn ignition on, slammed car detected as too low. Hence chassis system failure.
After car started, compressor turns on, packs air into air tank, after that pressure reaches certain level, ecu tells valves to open and raises car up. Depending how low psi of air inside suspension system is, can take couple, even 3 cycles of compressor (each cycle lasts less than a minute or so to prevent overheat). If compressor old, does not compress efficiently.
After car reaches needed height, cluster errors disappear and car does not show errors.
Only way to see them is via piwus2, which reads them out as stored past void errors that do not cause cluster warnings.
so your car should be ok, but it is a sure sign you gotta be thinking to pd the system, to see where the issues are starting to show. Plan now, so you don't get stuck later.

 

To add to what @ciaka notes: (I haven't figured out a good way to do so yet.) If you are going to store the car for a very long period of time try to support the bottom so it doesn't eventually sag/drop. This helps prevent compressing the air bags and possibly pinching/damaging them. (There is a warning in the service literature about leaving the car for extended periods of time lowered and this problem).

 

I did above when going away for long...cut blocks of 2x4 to stack up, supplemented with 1x2. Nailed together. So I have a stack for each corner. Then bought 4 rubber jack pads with notches gor porsche (14 bucks on amazon).
made sure the height is less than needed for car setting of normal. So I can hold the rubber pad into each notch. Then slide block of wood under the pad. There is space between pad and car. Did this for each corner.
when car sags, it will settle on the pads and blocks..
​​sags.then when you return, start the car, close all doors and wait until t raises back again.
This prevents bellows damage especially when car already leaks, but you aren't ready to replace yet.

 

FYI to you any anyone reading - that's backwards from how you should apply torque. You should not be torqueing from the bolt side while holding the nut stationary, it will have significantly more friction and you will "hit torque" without the proper tension in the bolt (tension in the bolt is what creates the necessary clamping force in the joint).

Unless otherwise specified by something like a shop manual, design torque values are always for dry joints, and for nut/bolt joints it's always applied to the nut.

I just did this job, you absolutely CAN get a wrench in the wheel well next to the air spring, while you tighten the nut in the engine bay. Honestly, if you snug up the joint first and then go to the engine bay to tighten the nut, the bolt head in the wheel well doesn't spin anyways (at least anecdotally on all 4 of mine).

 

The temperature dropped below zero and I got the chassis system failure warning. The suspension wasn't drooping and it drove fine. Went away after a restart and a warm-up to about 9F. It's a shame that PASM is temperature-sensitive because this car goes great in the snow.

 

​​​​​​I would guess air got in your system with some moisture which froze in the cold. I never purchased the special N2 filling apparatus nor Nitrogen 5.0 tank. I had a local independent shop fill it properly...

 

I'm still a bit confused about the filling with nitrogen thing.

I understand the concept behind nitrogen in theory (N2 doesn't have any H2O in it), but in practice doesn't the system regularly pull exterior air as needed to re-pressurize the accumulator?

If so, what's the point of the nitrogen if ambient air is pulled into the system by design?

Or do I have that understanding wrong?

 

The system has a tank that is pressurized with nitrogen. The pressure is set to a good mid-point between having the bags being at normal level, and it having enough to add to each strut as needed - with an additional reserve. If a corner is too high, it pumps the N2 back into the tank, raising the pressure inside it. If it needs to lower a strut, it pumps it out of the tank and into the strut. In theory, it should never need to add additional air from ambient. What happens eventually is that the pressure gets too low in the tank and the system adds makeup air from the atmosphere, or the pressure in the tank gets too high and it vents N2 out.

The N2 should last you a good long while though. However, at least where I live, it is not required due to temperatures.

 

If you are observing one shock staying too high, it is most likely because of the valve block. The valve block and the valves on the shock itself, control the movement of air in/out of shock.
The shock side valves are not typically the fail point. Just make sure electrical connections to the shock and to the height sensor are secure and solid (nothing seems broken, etc).
If it is all ok, most likely the valve block is failing internally (valve will not open or is way too slow opening/closing).
Only way to confirm is a PIWIS2 scan. In the diags section it will tell you specifically if the valves are not opening or exceed time limit for opening or closing.
This is normally fixed by replacing the valve block. Not hard, takes some time. It is best you put support under jack points, so when air comes out of lines, the car rests on the blocks as opposed to slamming onto shock bellows (this can sometimes damage the bellows, causing need to replace shocks).
The PASM chassis system failure error gets cleared out once conditions change (I assume after car warmed up, engine gave heat to shocks, etc.). After you restarted, shocks were adjusted (probably without you even noticing), and error went away.
All air suspension is affected by temperature. Simple Boyle's Law.

 

I just wanted to add an observation as I did the front left strut change without filling with N2. The literature says you can discharge one strut and "it will be transferred to the accumulator". The gist is that the accumulator has enough volume to accommodate one corner (at a time) worth of N2. So just so happen Foxwell NT510 Elite supports changing struts, so I tried discharging the front left. Interestingly enough even though Porsche literature doesn't say so, the N2/air distributed not only to the accumulator but the three remaining strut and (rear) shocks. I ended up supporting all 3 tires with motorcycle jacks and they were filled seemingly rock hard/to the max! I reported here but people noted it may be a glitch in the Foxwell programming. It may have been, or that it was by design...

Anyways extremely pure N2 would "act" more like an ideal gas, governed by the ideal gas law, PV=nRT if I recall correctly. T, is in K, and that affects everything somehow. I'm just not smart enough to figure it out. (This affects whether the system would vent out N2 naturally, or only if it's sprung a leak)....

 

You still own a Panamera? I thought your wife forced you to buy a Tesla.

 

Tesla said no RWD long range is gonna be made. Asked us to change our reservation or refund $2500. Would not even make a good faith effort to give the original FSD pricing. So what would have been a $60.5 k AWD when she first reserved the $56.5 k RWD became a $72.99 k. My wife let them return her money....

How's your Pannie? Did you eventually sell the 3rd Porsche?

 

The unfortunate thing is that Tesla won't even blink at the loss of you as a customer. They'll just find someone else to sucker, and there's a long line waiting for the opportunity it seems.

Tesla cars have some redeeming qualities, Tesla as a company is just awful in so many ways it's not funny.

 

Best place to purchase after market front struts? So is the consensus that they don’t need to be filled with nitrogen?
I see suncore industries has some
anyone ever purchase

https://suncoreindustries.com/?gclid...SAAEgKJ1vD_BwE


thx