Monday, September 12, 2005 - 03:21 am, by: Roger Costello(Roger)
The Celsior and Soarer air suspensions to my knowledge both have this feature. The high setting is not recommended for driving above 60 kmh and adversely affects high speed handling and economy, hence the auto drop feature. The Celsior and Soarer normally drop quite a bit lower than the low setting at freeway speeds depending on road conditions, again this is to improve handling and fuel economy. If the road's not smooth enough, normal height is maintained. I have seen one explicit Toyota warning against on road driving with the high setting. From memory it was because the air bags can be damaged more easily by speed humps etc. Apparently on the high setting they reach much greater internal air pressures on compression before hitting the bump stops which is not good for the air bags.
The high setting was intended more for increasing clearance while negotiating difficult driveways or rough sections at low speed. It is apparently not meant to offer longer suspension travel for ignoring speed humps and going off road. I still routinely forget to switch back to low after parking somewhere where the high setting prevents the front from catching or visiting friends with muffler removing driveways. I usually notice later as the car returns to high and gets "jiggly" coming off a freeway and back below 60 kmh. Before I changed the rubber mounts and filter for the compressor it was much more obvious as you could hear the thing hammering away and going up took some time. Now it is silent and takes about 30 seconds it is only the slightly unsettled ride that gives away the fact that I've yet again forgotten to switch it back. I wonder why given all the other audible/visual warnings Toyota did not make it ding a bell or display a Klingon message to remind us we are 45mm higher than we should be.
Now have the front and rear struts available for Celsiors/LS400's. The air suspension was an option on LS400's in the land of the free but we only got the wire springs in Oz. Baggs, if you tell me they sold the LS400 in NZ with Air Suspension as an option I will just spew given Toyota also sold Six New Soarers there as the only factory export of UZZ31's I am aware of. They even had English user manuals! Bloody Kiwi's.
