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Thread: "To BMW or Arnott To BMW?" Finally time for airbags!

  1. #26
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    Where's your sense of adventure ? Go for the $85. ones.


  2. #27
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    Hate to say it but what does BMW have into those air bags ? Twenty bucks tops to make them.


  3. #28
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    I severely doubt its that cheap, in fact I bet its expensive, because thats what happens to carmakers when cars go out of production and they have to order short lots of obsolete parts infrequently.

    Start with the cost of the Arnotts. I believe the the OE's are Conti bags, like Arnott sources. Just based on general rules of thumb... if Arnott sells them for $150 via distribution, they probably cost them anywhere between $50-80?

    On one hand you might think that BMW gets a much bigger volume discount than Arnott, however old parts like this are highly likely to be on an old price schedule that nobody is sweating over in fact they might be in full on "gouge the old car owners and get those things off the road" mode.

    When the car is in production BMW has huge incentives to drive the part cost down but as soon as it goes out of production they could give 2 craps unless they are warranty fail items and once all the warranties expire then especially zero craps given. And then the Tier suppliers start cranking the "sporadic short run replacement parts" order prices up. So basically the question is something like "what did a brand new model of Conti bags cost at BMW / mfr prices in 2003? And what do they cost now for short-runs?"

    The answer to those questions very well could be something like:
    2003 - anywhere between $30-80
    2017 - $100-150 maybe?

    - - - Updated - - -

    BTW, what triggers a major price increase on the dealer price list is usually a new cost-price to BMW from a new order being received, so the factory part price increases is a good indicator that BMW's cost has continued to go up on those bags like it has for other parts...
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  4. #29
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    When's this buttocks lift happening?

  5. #30
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    No rush... haven't ordered the bags yet - maybe do that today or tomorrow, might get around to it this weekend if they come Friday but if not, not a great big deal. Today is gorgeous day if this weather holds up that'd be nice for my unheated garage sitch but regardless shouldn't be a challenge.
    2003 M3CicM6 TiAg
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  6. #31
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    Quote Originally Posted by jp5Touring View Post
    Look decent enough, $85. worth the risk I think. Not a hard job at all. If you get them and they look to cheap can always return.
    I started that route, don't do it the rubber was about 1/2 the thickness of the OEM bag at the end where they are wrapped with the metal strap to the housing. Maybe they will last but thinner is not better in my book, and the OEM are set up that way for a reason. They got return without even being removed from the plastic bags they came in.

    Quote Originally Posted by adm750 View Post
    The Arnott's have the good rep (except for poor schatzy's experience...he was really suffering on that one...) but for the most part, you never hear anyone complain about them which speaks volumes.
    The Arnott bags do have a good reputation. My issue was that once i replaced the airbags (that were leaking) it showed other problem in the system existed. It took a while to sort out but in the end the car is fixed.

    Quote Originally Posted by adm750 View Post
    I wound up using Aerosus on mine........ I didn't have the most favorable experience when I bought them but most of that may just have been a bit of buyer's uncertainty on my part coming out.
    My experience with Aerosus on purchasing the Solenoids was less than satisfactory. And free shipping is fine but they shipped it from Germany and I had to pay $14+ is duties to get them out of customs. But to their credit they are the "only" company that i can find that sells the solenoids as a separate item.

    Quote Originally Posted by geargrinder View Post
    Still an unsolved mystery seems to be what's the actual dang difference between the 'Sport' and 'Normal' bags anyway?! Are they truly different dimensions? The factory bags have that black vs white plastic as the identifier but is it even significant?
    I dont have any direct experience on this but after hours and hours of reading threads in the us and europe it seems that the Sport bags are about 27mm (1-1/16") shorter that the Non Sport when fully extended out of the car as in the picture below. I had BMW Sport bags in the car and when extended that OEM and the Arnott the Arnott was about 12mm (15/32") longer. So it seems that maybe the Arnott are manufactured in between the two so that they work with either suspension.
    BMW-5-series-air-bag.JPG

    When installing them I used a vacuum to suck some the the air out to shorten them and put tape over the opening to keep them from expanding again. I put them in and raise the suspension up all the way and the bag studs did not poke thru the the floor of the car. I had to pull the tape and let them expand about 1.5 inches before the studs came thru the floor. And when the suspension was all the way down with them connected to the floor they could easily have let the suspension drop another 1" probably before uncurling the lower end of the rubber. So although not an engineer and not being an expert on these things I would be willing to bet it does not matter which one is in the suspension as the limits of suspension travel are well within the limits of the bag travel. It is the level sensors and the amount of air in the bags that sets the ride level of the car.

    BTW GG BavAuto in NH has the Arnott bags for $139.95 and their black Friday deal is free shipping on orders over $19.74 not tax so that is. They most likely will ship factory direct from BavAuto as that is how they did mine a few months ago and they list only 1 side in stock and the other side as direct ship. They stock a lot less in the warehouse in NH than they used to.
    Last edited by schatzy62; 11-23-2017 at 01:06 PM.
    2003 525iT Automatic, Topas Blue Exterior, Gray Leather Interior, Sports Suspension, Sports Seats, M 3 spoke Steering Wheel.
    2008 328xi E91 (wagon) Automatic, Barberatot Metallic Exterior, Terracotta Leather Interior.

  7. #32
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    Thanks for ALL that Shatzo. I was reading the BavAuto thinking "YESS! Trip to Portsmouth in 10-9-8... but then got to the 'drop ship' part. DANG. No excuse for a stop at Earth Eagle.

    Hmmm... maybe I'll still "have to go up and pick one up in person to 'save on shipping' " ? (nobody here knows my wife, right?)

    https://www.google.com/maps/uv?hl=en...itAKEQoioIfzAN

    Seriously I'll be doing some Black Friday comparo shoppering tomorrow and see what comes in as the best, but that was good tip for sure...
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  8. #33
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    I used Aerosus bags when I replaced mine. No issues for the 4K miles since the install.

  9. #34
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    I had my shop order me some Arnott's and installed them with a couple of beers in under 2 hours. you're right that it's an easy job. what parts did you end up getting?
    '98 M3 5spd - '03 540it 6spd M-Sport

  10. #35
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    Arnott's are coming... Sag has gotten more frequent too so just in time!
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  11. #36
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    A little late seeing this thread, but I went with Arnott. Easy install and no problems so far. Coming into the 540iT from an Audi allroad I was well acquainted with Arnott. There were some issues over the years with allroad bags but Arnott was always excellent to deal with for warranty exchanges (lifetime to original purchaser). Let's just say I got pretty good at swapping front bags on the allroad. There were some in allroad circles who gave up on them, but I have been okay with their products and support.

    I liked the idea also of the replacement clip, but wound up reusing the original because it was still in good shape and seemed like a more secure lock for the air line.

  12. #37
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    Task begun. Took a whole :15 just to juggle cars and cleanup the garage and get the car in. Car was flat on the ground when fired up to move it too - hadn't been driven in a day or so...

    Gotta cram some chow in my pie hole, then will grab the impact wrench and start getting serious about these boys.
    2003 M3CicM6 TiAg
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  13. #38
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    Quote Originally Posted by geargrinder View Post
    .....will grab the impact wrench and start getting serious about these boys.
    going about this the wrong way GG...grab the hammer...
    "two wrongs don't make a right...only three lefts do...."
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  14. #39
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    All done. Tips here were helpful although I have some more myself. Took 1:30, but pretty sure I could knock it out in :45 on somebody elses car, assuming nothing special / no hitches. Hell with a helper (which would be great in 3-4 spots...) you could probably knock it out in :30 with practice.

    My thoughts:


    1. Arnott doesn't have you disable/disconnect the system before starting. In fact, Arnott instructions are 'bare bones', which is mainly OK cuz its so EZ, but there's a few gaps. I didn't bother looking in my Bentley for instructions since it's usually tehsuxorz for anything Touring-special but I might check it later. Because of how the system works and going into 'lift mode' automatically, that should be OK... but I prefer to do something to be safe. I used INPA to put it in 'factory mode' before starting, the neanderthal method would be to pull either the module or pump fuse before starting out.
    2. Don't strip the socket heads of the bolts for the forward tie-downs like I did by getting cavalier in use of a cordless hex driver. Granted mine have been out a zillion times because of my stereo projects but now I need to buy a new one or two... .grrrr... OK that's just my stupid.
    3. Next time I would loosen the small colored fill-hoses FIRST - at least as soon as the car was on jack stands - then let the air drain out while you take wheels off and do other stuff etc. You could also do that and come back in an hour or whatever, it would save you removing those fittings all the way, which is a little fiddlley. I looked for a way in software to drain the air from the bags but couldn't find it. That's what I'd really prefer to do and not mess w/ the little colored fill tubes.
    4. Removing factory air fitting clips is stupid easy although I was hesitant to believe the method, and the Arnott picture is inconclusive - it looks like maybe you are pulling the tabs OUT but no, like the factory labels that are on the hoses show, you want to squeeze them together with something like large needlenose pliers.... (I STILL broke one of mine squeezing too hard so I'm glad that the Arnotts came with new ones! Next time I'll be gentle and more trusting in the process...) Be careful with those black factory tubes and try not to move or bend them more than absolutely necessary... they look to me like they'd be happy to have gotten somewhat brittle over time... I was real nervous when I had to bend them a little out of the way each time I had to do something.
    5. Suggest to have a 13mm offset box wrench handy unless you have some crazy comprehensive snap-on toolbox with some special box-end swivel-ratchet like Arnott shows in their pix. My bolts from underneath came out like buttah, aside from 'access' issues. Actually I think my right-side one wasn't fully tightened, seemed like the air spring base was a little loose! Musta been from the factory because all those parts were clearly originally and nevah bin touched. The hardest part, and a thing that would carve off a lot of time next time, was figuring out what wrench to use to get at them and from what angle, as they're hard to access and a socket won't fit up in there. I used offset wrenches, and still had to do the "1/12 of a turn from this access slot, then 1/12 of a turn from that other access slot..." thing. Luckily they were so clean they threaded off/on by hand except for the very end tighten bit so that wasn't that tedious. Old ones came out pretty easily, one was a bit stuck to the control arm from a little schmucky 15yr old road stuff but nothing a bump with a rubber mallet didn't sort out in a second.
    6. When it came to stick the new ones in, they were too big to jam in there in a 'relaxed state' (TWSS ), so I remembered what Herr Schatzer said, and I popped the rubber caps off each one, squeezed it down a bit by hand (it did this easily), then put the cap back on. That held them compressed just slightly and made it super easy to pop up into the tower, then pulled the rubber cap off again for a few minutes (again big needlenose, reach down through the hole and pull it off...) and they expanded back out again. Noice. Thanks for the tip, boss.
    7. Arnott says 'install reverse of removal'. To that I say "Suck it Gary". Seemed to me to be much easier to clip the loose bag in up at the top first, snap the tubes on, and then to do the bolts... than to bolt it to the control arm first... I mean that would work too but you'd want to jack the control arm up and that'd be more steps and require actual jack tool involvement etc. I was able to pull the bags up (again, some big needlenosers) via the center tube (protected by its rubber cap) and snap the retainer clips on super easily. OK the opposite would also be OK if you had a helper with you lifting the arms (more on that in a second) but for solo, I say: clip it up then bolt it up...
    8. I wish I had smeared a little extra synthetic grease on the o-rings on the connection pipes before I snapped the fittings down. They are a little greased but I think a little more woulda been better. One fitting seemed to latch right away, the other took a gentle bump of the rubber mallet to snap down into place. More on that later also.
    9. Then to get the bottom bolts on, honestly I struggled for a while... STUPIDLY trying to pull the rubber spring down to the mounting point.... At some point the moron-lightbulb went off and I remembered "hey dipshit, this isn't a regular car suspension, there is NOTHING holding that control arm down except its own weight!", and I immediatley grabbed the bottom of the rotor, lifted the whole corner-suspension up by hand, and shazam, control arm / bag settle into the proper relationship, bolt hand-threads up in there easy, and indeed: Robert was the fraternal sibling of one of my parents, as they say across the pond. As mentioned, you could use a jack to do that too but I didn't find it necessary, at least doing it in this order...
    10. After tossing wheels back on, I stupidly (becoming a theme?) dropped the floor jack to the bottom thinking "OK time to set her down!". Well of course with the system disabled (and asleep anyway even if it wasn't) the car dropped all the way down on my jack. Next time I'd drop it down to "below regular height but not slamming the floor jack"... However as soon as I took it out of 'factory mode', she aired up nicely and looked great. Took quick test drive with the front cargo cover still off just in case and all was great!
    11. About that test drive tho... ah-ha - finally not so stupid (OK a stretch here but I was smaht not to put the cover back on quite yet...) Got back and was about to put the cover back on and noticed that one fitting was much higher than the other... OH, what? I think THAT is the fitting that 'snapped easily' into place, vs the one that wanted an extra tap... Well turns out that one wasn't really fully latched down, so if I hadn't caught it, I'd have put the cover back on, and on some big bump, the top would have probably blown off and I"d have lost air catastrophically in that bag. Again a quick rubber mallet tap and it settled into the proper location.
    12. Last thing, the Arnott mount-pins are LONG compared to the stock ones. Like when you clip them in there's something like 7-8mm of slack. I may be calling them about that tomorrow. The factory pins are short and hold the top plates of the bags up against the chassis rather snugly (and include that paper gasket...) so that part is definitely different... Am thinking about adding some kind of nylon spacer + metal washer to take up the space so that if the suspension drops down (like when I'm catching air off the whoops at the MX track..) it doesn't go slack and rattle around... But I'll see what they say...


    So, that's it. GG's tips on bag swaps. Fun job since it's so 'major' a job on paper (changing springs) but so super super easy... BTW the INPA interface to the system is more robust than I remembered, hadn't used it in a while. It lets you see leak detection parameters and read sensors and all kinda good stuff. You can manually force it 'full high' and 'full low' for diagnostics and stuff. INPA should be real helpful for somebody trying to diagnose issues that's for sure.

    What? Pix0rz? Yeah yeah we got pitcherz.

    Naturally we all have our amp and power racks between the 2 bag locations so this will look familiar to everyone:



    Before:



    One down (the one I didn't break the clip on obviously...):



    Bolts clean, not horrible to access just poor wrench angles...



    New guys snapped in place... Notice the oddly too-tall Arnott mounting pins...



    This one is the one not-quite-snapped-in-fully... woulda been easy to miss... glad I dint.



    Another shot of the long Arnott pins (and can see how the fitting shouldn't be sticking up that high as well...)

    2003 M3CicM6 TiAg
    2002 540iT Sport Vortech S/C 6MT LSD TiAg
    2008 Audi A3 2.0T DSG (the daily beater)
    2014 BMW X1 xDrive28i (wifemobile)

    Former:

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  15. #40
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    AH HA !!! see...!?!?! step 11...!!!! I knew there would be a hammer involved....

    You really do have some great write-ups. I, for one, appreciate the detail you put into them. Glad the install went well and glad you caught that fitting issue.
    "two wrongs don't make a right...only three lefts do...."
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  16. #41
    geargrinder's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by adm750 View Post
    AH HA !!! see...!?!?! step 11...!!!! I knew there would be a hammer involved....
    lol. Just the gentle hammer this time. Rubber mallet is even lower on the scale than dead-blow shot hammer.

    You should see my full hammer line up. I got almost all the hammers.

    Hammer Time.



    Quote Originally Posted by adm750 View Post
    You really do have some great write-ups. I, for one, appreciate the detail you put into them..
    Otherwise known to my wife and friends as “oh Jesus, please STFU already...”
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  17. #42
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    Thanks for the tips! I sense an air strut replacement in my near future— the right one sags down a little if I leave the car for a few days. That'll be the last component to replace in the rear, everything else is 100% brand new at this point.
    1995 525i 5-speed - Thread

  18. #43
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    Yeah kinda looking forward to doing another one and seeing how fast I can knock it out.
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  19. #44
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    Great walkthrough GG!

    Did you ever find out if Arnott supplied one specific for the sport wagons? I read the post wear the gentleman measured them to be inbetween the standard and sport airbag, but i dont think you ever touched on that supject again.

    I jacked up the front of my touring today and im afraid i may have blown my passenger side bag. I dont hear a hiss as if it was leaking but after a few spins around the block it doesnt seem to be filling up.

    Mine is the sport wagon needing the "37121095081, 82"
    Air bags, but arnott only seems to offer one selection.

    Can you confirm this is the one that you went for?

    https://www.arnottindustries.com/a-2...r-air-leveling

    Any differance in ride height that you can notice, or did it only fill up to the sport level since you put it back to "factory height" using inpa.

    Thanks in advance!

  20. #45
    geargrinder's Avatar
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    Nope, arnott only offer one model... Seems to work 100% fine... As doc'd it's somewhere between the 2 BMW versions.

    And yes, the whole system will continue to set this exact ride height as before, as it's a closed loop system. Changing the bags won't change ride height. I'm happy with the arnotts so far, granted haven't track day back to backed w OEM, but they seem perfectly good.
    2003 M3CicM6 TiAg
    2002 540iT Sport Vortech S/C 6MT LSD TiAg
    2008 Audi A3 2.0T DSG (the daily beater)
    2014 BMW X1 xDrive28i (wifemobile)

    Former:

    1985 MB Euro graymarket 300SL
    1995.5 Audi S6 Avant (utility/winter billetturbobattlewagen)


  21. #46
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    AquilaBMW is offline Mad Bimmerist BMW CCA Member
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    GG - How are you posting pics these days?



  22. #47
    geargrinder's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by AquilaBMW View Post
    GG - How are you posting pics these days?
    Depends. Dixpix, or the normal kind?
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  23. #48
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    Quote Originally Posted by geargrinder View Post
    Depends. Dixpix, or the normal kind?
    LMAO! Normal like you posted here.



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    Quote Originally Posted by AquilaBMW View Post
    LMAO! Normal like you posted here.
    hahaha....I don't think anything GG does is "normal"....
    "two wrongs don't make a right...only three lefts do...."
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    '89 gsxr-750 - former traffic knife
    '97 528i sedan - holding on strong...(just sold after 16 years of ownership - sad day)
    '03 Euro 525it - something about a famous dolphin.....

    '06 Mercury Grand Marquis (don't ask....it gets the job done....)
    '84 Specialized Allez - full Campagnolo Super Record
    '99-ish Cannondale CAAD4
    "Stinky" - Kona Stinky Five
    '86 528e
    2008 E70 X5 3.0


  25. #50
    Join Date
    Dec 2015
    Location
    Plymouth, WI
    Posts
    43
    My Cars
    528iT, Fiero, Stingray
    I replaced my OEM bags with Arnott's when I refreshed all my suspension components. I did it because they looked kind of rough and there was a sport bag on one side and a non-sport on the other. More on that in a second.

    I also noticed the Arnott studs were quite a bit longer than OEM so I put washers underneath the clips to make the fit more like factory. Otherwise I thought they were really nice pieces and I doubt I'll have any issues with them.

    I took some pictures of the bags I took out of the car to compare the sizes since I was also really curious on the difference between sport and regular when I was researching bags. Plus I noticed that I had (1) white bag and (1) black bag.

    I've set them on similar rolls of tape because they won't sit flat with the bumps on the bottom. The bumps are the same on both.

    On the left is the white base; part #37121095081 (sport), the right is the black base; part #37121094614 (non-sport)
    20180109_175327_HDR_resized.jpg

    Here you can see them fully extended and fully "collapsed" i guess? I see no difference in length and the rubber feels exactly the same between the two. Granted the are kind of crusty.

    20180109_175502_resized.jpg

    20180109_175314_resized.jpg

    When collapsed they look a little different but I assure you they are the same. They just don't have great shape deflated.

    So there is some food for thought

    -Tim

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