One of those suspension questions

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Rushsampson

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Soo... My '96 Mark is currently nose down on the pavement in storage. Both sides equally, pretty much as flat as those front shocks will go. The car has been hibernating for about four months now, no ignition, no movement. I'm kind of scared to hit the key now, since this has never happened in storage before, and I'm not interested in burning up what is a stellar pump in the car, and if I have to source a pair of front shocks then so be it. Now here comes my question - the car has Arnott replacements on the front that are about seven years old, not a whole awful lot of miles on them, perhaps 10k. What is the chances that they have failed in that amount of time? I'm not interested in paying upwards of $500 for one side either, if that's the case, there has to be a better way. And what exactly is the propensity for both sides on the front to fail at the same time? Or are the two linked in the lines somewhere? I doubt this highly since both have their independent solenoids and sensors. I basically just don't want to pull the car out and have it be on the ground ten minutes later, if it pumps up at all. I'm sure there are people who can shed some light on this, and I truly would greatly appreciate it. I am also not interested in entertaining the idea of having springs under the car at all. Thanks guys, my Mark will thank you indefinitely!
 
the arnott bags are quite bad in my experience.

lifting the car with an empty bag won't kill the pump.
its the leaks and excessive runtime while driving that kills the pump.

one flat bag will bring the whole nose down, without much, if any, tilt or lean.

air it up, and see what happens first.
 
I went to pick and pull and paid 30.00 for drivers side front with solenoid. That might be a choice as a backup.
 
Chris is right. Since its been sitting for so long its probably a minor leak if you had no issues before. It may be a solenoid o-ring leak even. Fire it up, the pump may time out on the first go so let it site a few minutes if you are worried about driving the pump hard, then restart the process.
 
my 96 sits in the garage most of the time, and I rarely drive it anymore (less than 200 miles since inspection last July), so when I do drive it, when I stop I shut off the compressor before I shut down the engine-this keeps the bags fully filled up and not going into 'park' height (which is where the rubber folds over and small cracks develop)-so even though I have some sort of very small leak in mine, I usually dont ever have a slam even if it sits for months at a time.
 
Callencampbell8883 said:
I went to pick and pull and paid 30.00 for drivers side front with solenoid. That might be a choice as a backup.
Click to expand...

I was going to do this too, but the yard wanted $80 for each shock and how can you test them, with the wheels off the car? I could bring a battery and run the pump. Still be pretty hard to tell if all leaked out with no wheels on the car.
 
Pick n pull out here gives you 30 days to return them if they dont work. And 1 year if you pay 20 bucks. Mine were actually still holding air while I was taking them out.
 
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Well thanks all who have posted. I do really appreciate it! I have an update on the car, and I knew it was going to bother me until I could actually do something about it. So today I decided to pull the car out for a bit and take it for a jog. The car pumped up the nose from slammed in one go, which surprised me, I thought for sure it would time out. I drove it about eight miles, and let it sit in the driveway for about four hours. I had previously measured the clearance in each of the front wheel wells at park and the difference was minute, negligible even.

So if that's how it plays out, and it takes more than a week for the front to leak down, then it's going to have to get a lot worse than that before I think about tearing the front suspension apart. I understand that the Arnott bags are not that great, I learned that first hand right after I bought the car with the front bags having around 1500 miles on them, and the passenger side shock developed a light clunk. Reman bags suck. The originals lasted almost 100k miles and about 13 years! But I'm going to keep an eye on it, and in the mean time, I will definitely be trying to find a reasonable set of front replacements for the car. It has Suncore bags in the rear, and those seem to be of a markedly better quality. Ah, so be it. Anyway, thanks again everyone, I shall be back if someone else requires help or if my Mark goes awry for sure.
 
Callencampbell8883 said:
So far so good.they've been in for a week now
Click to expand...

wow that looks to be in pretty good condition. Mine will lower a couple of inches if she sits for a week without being driven. I still think it could be the o rings, but have been told otherwise by members here. Just seemed odd that when the battery was disconnected and not driven for over two weeks they didn't lower, but with the battery connected after that lowered couple of inches in a week.
I will ask them if will give me a deal simular to what you got. I would have to drop them in after purchasing to test them and may have to put my originals back in...not sure I want to go that route yet.
 
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