Autoride suspension help

George B said:

Went out and checked this morning. Still holding air. I won’t have any weight to move until Saturday but I am confident it is fixed.

To wrap it up here is what I found. It seems I had two problems.

1. The rear shock air bladders were leaking. Not a lot but enough to loose pressure over time. They were always flat in the morning.
2. The compressor seemed to lack the ability to consistently raise the vehicle. Then I was doing my testing it was like the check valve was slipping and I couldn’t produce the pressure without running a very long time. It is hard to diagnose a leak because with the truck unloaded the system doesn’t require more that a few PSI to be level so it would just dump the pressure right away when the compressor would shut off.

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MEDAFAP said:

First time poster (be gentle) adding to this thread because I have a suspension question.... I recently bought a 2009 Yukon XL with bad rear shocks (bladders are blown on both sides; compressor is still functional). I'm thinking about replacing with Arnott AS-3430s, but I will lose Autoride capabilities (if I followed this thread carefully enough).... should I care if I don't regularly tow large loads? What does Autoride actually do in these trucks? Thanks in advance for your help.

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MEDAFAP said:

First time poster (be gentle) adding to this thread because I have a suspension question.... I recently bought a 2009 Yukon XL with bad rear shocks (bladders are blown on both sides; compressor is still functional). I'm thinking about replacing with Arnott AS-3430s, but I will lose Autoride capabilities (if I followed this thread carefully enough).... should I care if I don't regularly tow large loads? What does Autoride actually do in these trucks? Thanks in advance for your help.

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wsteele said:

Welcome from Idaho.

I have an Autoride/Autolevel equipped 2007 Yukon. I have owned this ruck since new. I think this system is about the best suspension I have ever had on an SUV/light truck. Both the dampening characteristics and the ride height adjustment in the back are superb.

It does cost more to keep it, I have replaced the compressor once, all 4 corners of dampeners (all OE) and I am pretty sure if I had deleted my system and gone conventional, it would have saved me money and provided perhaps better longevity (I am averaging about 100K miles on the OE components, I think). What I am pretty sure of is the ride flexibility would have been compromised with conventional setups.

Just my opinion though. Pretty sure someone will be along soon to refute everything I just posted, which is fine, it is what makes the world go round.

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MEDAFAP said:

Thanks for the quick reply! More specifically, what advantages do you think the Autoride provides? Daily drive ride quality improvement? Ride quality improvement while towing? I've never owned GM before, so I'm just trying to better understand from veterans what I should expect from the system. Thanks again!

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wsteele said:

To me, what it provides is some mitigation to the tradeoffs you are faced with when you pick a specific conventional suspension. That is, the ability for the system to adjust dynamically to the demands it faces at the moment, without you having to live with that "optimized" setup, when things change.

When you go for a more conventional suspension, you generally pick dampening and spring rates and when you are driving in the place those are optimized, you have an optimal setup, otherwise you are getting suboptimal results. It kind of is like tires. If you like to drive off road a lot and pick some very aggressive block tread design, you get much better traction in challenging conditions. The trade off, maybe much higher road noise when barreling down the interstate.

The Autoride/Autolevel system works pretty darn well. The trade off for it is a little higher overall cost of ownership.

There are situations when removing the Autoride/Autolevel is a good choice. If you are going to using your rig for serious off roading and need to do some serious modifications to allow you to get where you want to go, the factory Autoride/Autolevel is going to have to go and likely the setup you get to will work much better in the extremes you might encounter. Also, of course, once deleted when it comes time to replace worn components, pretty much everything is going to be cheaper.

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George B said:

Update to my portion of this thread. My new shocks and compressor have been working well. For a week now. I gave them the true test today hauling fire wood. The system worked as it should and leveled the truck. Other than feeling the trailer pushing me at times the ride was superb.

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