Flat tyre showing as a suspension fault.

[WesleyP]

Set off to work this morning, at first it felt like I had a soft tyre. Some idiot right behind me so couldn't stop straight away, but I then noticed the yellow warning light for the adaptive suspension had come on. I pulled up when I could, had a quick look round the car, all seemed OK, ride height seemed OK. (I had a similar warning last year when the pump failed and the car was sat right down.) Anyway set off again, fault cleared after restarting, only to come on again after a couple of miles. Stopped the car, restarted, fault cleared, then after a couple of miles, warning light on again. Once again, stopped the engine, restarted, fault cleared. Its a 12 mile drive to work. When I got to work I put the suspension into Allroad position and it seemed to lift OK Checkd round the car, found a very squidgy looking rear offside tyre..which I should have spotted in the first place. Anyway it is now blown up and will be keeping an eye on it before going home but why does a flat tyre affect the suspension like that?

[Guest 2]

There's probably a fail safe built in when a sensor detects the suspension travel is 'off' on one of the corners, possibly like TPMS but I'm guessing one of the sensors in the suspension has detected a discrepancy between the 4 hence the error, I could be totally wrong but that's what it sounds like to me.


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[zollaf]

a flat tyre means the car sits down in that corner. this means the ride height sensor will be lower than all the others, thus the car flags it as a fault.

[WesleyP]

Thanks guys, I thought it might be something like that, will let you know how the drive home goes...
If I had relied on my senses more instead of what the dashboard was telling me I'd have spotted the low pressure earlier. You learn by your mistakes!

[WesleyP]

One new tyre later and all is fine. I really shouldn't be using the Air Suspension warning as a tyre pressure indicator! Mind you I've never been happy on getting tyres repaired, you just never know if and when the repair might give way.