How to change the front air spring on my Range Rover p38.

These are the tools I used.

2 jacks; 1 bottle jack and 1 trolley jack, a 13mm socket, a small spanner (I think it was an 8mm), some long nose pliers, some flat head screwdrivers, a small pen knife, a hammer, and a tyer iron.

First open the bonnet and a few doors, this will shut off the air suspension system preventing it from doing anything while you are under the car, I would recommend this when working on any car with air suspension, you don’t want to be under her when she decides to drop down a bit, it could very easily kill you. To start jack the chassis up and remove the wheel.

Jack up the chassis with one jack and put the other one under the axle.

You will now need to remove the wheel-well lining, there are 8 little plastic fixings holding it in, be very careful not to damage these as they are quite delicate.

Carefully get 2 screwdrivers under the edge of the clips and lift them till they pop out a bit.

Then get a small spanner I used an 8mm and get under the head and lift it all the way out, then remove the little plastic holder it was seated in.

You will end up with 8 clips in 8 holders.

The liner is held in at the top by these bits so push the top in first then pull it out.

You will know be able to see the spring fully, its got 2 metal clips holding the top and 1 metal pin holding the bottom, and the air-line comes in at the very top.

Gently pry the top of the clip up and then slide it off.

It's a good idea to replace the clips with new ones.

You won’t be able to remove the air-line with it still under the system pressure, so you need to depressurize the system, you can do this by plugging in to the ecu and doing a manual air dump, or if you don’t have the stuff to read the ecu, (like me) gently pierce the spring with a small knife to slowly release the air, then take the air-line out.

To remove the air line push the brass retaining ring down and pull the air-line up and out.

You will now need to remove this bolt at the bottom of the air spring, then pull out the pin holding the bag at the bottom.

This is them after they have been removed.

Then slide the old air spring out.

The old spring and the new one.

Then reverse the procedure to fit the new bag, fit the bottom first then jack up the axle to fit the top of the bag into the mounting.

Jack up the axle so you can fit the bag to the top easier.

Then fit the top clips, then fit the air line, and at this point you will want to check you have no leaks, so now make sure that there is nothing under the car and that the jacks holding the chassis and axle are very stable. now close the bonnet and the doors she will now make a few ticking noises and re-level the system putting a bit of pressure in to the new bag and dropping it out of the others, she will probably pretend to be a low-rider at this point, if you can’t here any hissing sounds and all seams to be good then refit the wheel-well liner and wheel, if you do hear a leak just open a door and the suspension is safe to work on again. when every thing is good then take the jack holding the axle away and slowly drop her back down to ground with the jack under her chassis, this will be the first proper pressure test as the spring takes the full weight of the car. You probably won’t be able to get the chassis jack out from under her at this point, get in her and close all the doors and turn her on and should go to normal ride height (if it’s a bit slow that’s normal she just needs to pressurize the accumulator under the right hand side of the car but it shouldn’t take more than 6 or 7 seconds if she is not moving you have a leek or a door is open or your are not in park with the parking brake on). as soon as she is up get out close the door and check for any leaks you can also take take the chassis jack away. then open the bonnet with the car running and wait for the compressor to stop running, its in a black plastic box at the top right of the engine bay take the cover off so you can feel if the compressor is running; filling the accumulator can take up to 15 min, Don’t let the compressor get to hot, as it starts to heat up cool it with a damp rag or cloth, the compressor will stop when your accumulator is full. give her a test drive to make sure everything is good and you are done.

I hope I have showed some people how to change the air springs cheaply, or at least given some one something to read for 5 min. sorry if it was boring. :-)