All About BMW Air Suspension

All About BMW Air Suspension

BMW air suspension has been around for a long time. It was introduced into production by BMW in 1981, and at that time there were limited options available. Today though, because of its many advantages, it's common to see BMWs having full suspensions at various parts of their cars. So, how exactly does the BMW X5 air suspension function? It's worth looking into how it works so you can appreciate just how good it is.

The suspension is fitted with three shock absorbers, two on the front axle and one on the rear. How does it work? The air suspension actually lowers one level downward at high speeds over 86 miles per hour. This reduces energy usage since less energy is used when the car is going downhill, but it also means the motor needs to produce more horsepower to move the vehicle at high speed. This is because the springs are loaded up higher than they need to be at higher speeds, so the engine has to work harder to get them moving at the appropriate rate.

BMW made use of two different kinds of air springs for this purpose. The lower one provides higher pressure than the upper one, so it has a bigger advantage when dealing with power surges. This means the car can be quicker at high speeds, but it can't break as much bodyweight when the car is carrying more weight. The air spring system lowers the air pressure, and the thicker second one keeps the pressure at the same level as the first one.

In order for this to work properly though, there are a lot of things that need to be in place. The air pressure must be correct, the pressure needs to be distributed to all the parts of the suspension and the length of the suspension itself needs to be correct. If one of these things is wrong then the whole system is going to be incorrect. The suspension can break, the car can skid or you can simply experience the above-mentioned problems.

To help with this problem, the engineers of BMW developed their own computer system to find out what is going wrong. With this information, they could improve each part individually, or make adjustments to the entire suspension. Eventually, they found the solution to reduce air pressure without increasing the amount of weight.

BMW hasn't stopped with the improvements though. They continue to research new technology to find more ways to make air springs work better. There is also talk of having an air Suspension with an electric motor in it. This way you don't need to use as much air, which helps to keep the weight down.

Tags: air bellows | air shocks