Aerosus rear air spring - air line not locking in?

[morganh91]

Hi All,

Apologies if this has been covered in another thread, I have searched a lot but couldn't find it.

I'm currently in the process of replacing the rear air springs on my S212 with Aerosus units.
The new spring is in place, and now all I need to do is push the air line into the brass connector (or so I'm told).

From the articles, posts and videos I saw before doing this, it seemed as though this literally was a case of just pushing the air line in, giving it a small tug backwards, and it would lock in place.

I can push my air line in what looks like the appropriate distance, but if I give it a pull to see if it's locked, it just pulls back out again, almost as if it's mocking me for expecting it to do anything else.
Every fitting guide I've seen says not to disturb the connector pre-fitted to the new spring (apart from one German video on youtube), it's paint-penned too which would imply it's been torque checked by Aerosus, and they do not provide a tightening torque for it, so I'm fairly convinced I shouldn't be removing & refitting it.
I've tried pushing more & more firmly in case there's a step to be overcome, but it's got to the point I'm concerned about damaging the line.

Has anyone else seen this when fitting Aerosus springs?
Is this normal, and it will somehow lock when the bag is actually inflated for the first time?
Or do I need to just push it in harder than you'd think?

Thanks in advance!

 

[morganh91]

So I fired the car up & got it to inflate the springs, half expecting the air lines to get fired out of the fittings.
They did not, and the springs are now inflated properly, and seem to be holding air.
However, I can still simply pull the air lines out of the fittings on the springs by hand, and if I do, the air obviously rushes out.
Pushing them back in stops it, so to me it seems like all that's holding them in is the o-rings (no clasps like the old springs had).

This seems dodgy to me, but as I said before, no online guides or videos seem to make a big deal about the air lines actually locking into the fittings.

Has anyone else done this and found this condition to be OK? Or am I being thick?

 

[morganh91]

I can close this one off, hope it helps anyone fitting Aerosus replacements in the future.

No, the air line does not lock itself into the Aerosus spring fitting - you need to remove the brass fitting & collar, gently open the collar up enough to fit the air line, and then refit them to the spring once it's in place.

 

[V6Matty]

Well done in finding a solution, I’d have not guessed to have tried that so a good fix