I FINALLY Fixed The Hydraulic Suspension On My CL65 AMG & You Won’t Believe What It Was! FIRST DRIVE

welcome to legit street cars and welcome to another abc hydraulic suspension video i definitely didn't think we'd still be here right now but we are the cl65 has definitely beaten my ego down to the ground because i haven't been able to entirely figure out this issue only half of the suspension works but it's nothing that a good old-fashioned daily affirmation can't take care of so in this video i will be fixing the abc hydraulic suspension on this car no matter what because because i'm good enough i'm smart enough and doggone it people like me i've always wanted to use that skit it seemed most appropriate in this video and i'm a big 90s snl fan and i have been practicing this just can't do it i've been practicing this cool wrench finger roll thingy that i saw in a video it's been a week i got nothing it's kind of embarrassing but anyway with that let's get to work on this car we have to fix it in this video it's got to happen okay so let me give you guys just a quick recap on the suspension if you guys want to know all about the insane one dollar o-ring that required me to fully disassemble this engine i'll leave the playlist down below but the engine is in good shape the suspension is not in good shape in the last video i found a smoking gun we had one of these accumulator balls fall apart and rubber went into the system blocked up the lines blocked up the front valve block i cleared that all up and the car rose from its grave in the front i thought we were good there but we weren't the back of the car the rear suspension does absolutely nothing at all now i blew out a bunch of hydraulic lines in the last video thinking that there was still some blockage going to the rear and air would travel through the lines and so it looked like everything's clear but i just i mean i have this feeling that it's got to be blockaged this entire issue still has to be some piece of rubber blocking something in the system so what i want to test out is rotting these lines out so we're going to treat it like a pipe in your house and we're going to stick something in it and try to push something out of it now before we get to that i just want to try something out this is kind of stupid i doubt it's going to work but we have to get the car up a little bit higher to lift it anyway and so i have to use the jack to raise up the rear and what i'm going to do is i'm just going to put the rear arms underneath level out the car in the front so that the codes for critical ride height disappear in the back and then we'll see if something happens the thought is because it's coated up in the rear for critical ride height that maybe it's not activating the solenoids to work i don't know probably not going to fix it but you never know okay with the help of the jack i got the arms underneath so let's make this look more normal that's about right okay so i just cleared out the codes let's start it up battery's pretty low yeah there's nothing going on nothing is moving at all it should go up higher than where it's at right now and another thing is it doesn't say that the vehicle is rising in the cluster anymore it used to say that when the suspension didn't work at all and as if i need any more suspension issues it looks like this line is starting to leak they're all tight so hopefully just needs a little bit of a titan i don't know but anyway these are the lines that we're gonna be rotting out these two guys right here going to the rear underneath this big plastic panel and then those are the only two lines from the front that go to the rear valve block and then from the valve block it sends the pressure to the rear hydraulic struts so i think just because i want to look at them physically probably won't be able to see anything we're going to take this plastic panel down too and hopefully not another issue is that this new ish battery is practically dead after sitting for just two weeks so something else that's trying to prevent me from driving around one of the most comfortable cars in existence these seats feel so good the ride with a suspension that works is amazing and speaking of comfortable you gotta check out vessi shoes the most comfortable and good looking shoes i've ever owned now i have a few pairs of vessies and they're made from dimetex which keeps your foot cool in the summer and warm in the winter and by far my favorite part is that these shoes are 100 waterproof not water resistant waterproof your feet will not get wet at all we have a tissue inside totally dry and you can't say that for other brand shoes where you get completely soaked now these vesty sneakers also work great in the wintertime so you can leave your big heavy boots at home and you can walk around in your vesses and your feet will stay dry so they'll pretty much handle any water event you throw at them whether that's splashing around in a puddle to sitting on a dock and dipping your shoes directly into a lake while on vacation like a totally normal sane person all the way to walking down a beach in florida your feet will stay dry they look good they feel amazing they're the most comfortable shoes i own they make an awesome gift for the holidays and the best part is if you guys click on my link in the video description box and use coupon code lsc you're going to get 25 off every pair of bessie sneakers that you order so i just want to say a big thanks to bessie for keeping my feet dry and for continuing to support automotive content creators like myself now with that let's get back to this abc suspension all right so let's remove a bunch of 10 mils [Applause] that lift arm is just barely holding that plastic panel on okay all right now i should be able to take this off there we go lots of dirt in here and back on the lift arm you go and just another refresher on how the system works because it's really not all that complicated this hose right here is connected to the back of the abc hydraulic pump so we get pressure that goes into this relief valve and then that pressure comes out of this line this has very low pressure this is just the relief so if we follow this line back this is everything right here for the system this line that goes right there the one that i think is leaking is the one that brings the pressure to this t and then splits it from the front going here and the back going here so they're kind of like separate systems i wouldn't imagine these would be clogged but you never know and we gotta check we physically have to check these so with that i think what i'm gonna do is start off by disconnecting these two lines so we can try and stick something in here and feel our way back but it is gonna be a little difficult with these bends okay so i have these lines disconnected and i'm gonna disconnect these lines one at a time as well we're gonna start with this line this would be the most suspect of the two and the only abnormality i can find is this hose has like a little bulge in it i don't know that could be nothing it's probably nothing but let's take this line off here and we're going to rot it out starting at this end because the rubber obviously would have come from the front so i think if we're going to be dislodging anything we should go in the line this way and the idea here is just that a piece of rubber is acting like a one-way valve so even though we were able to blow air through the line which is very low viscosity when it gets hit with 3000 psi of fluid if there's something jammed in there it might kind of do one of these and block up i don't know that's what i'm hoping for at least so anyway let's get this line off this little line wrench crow's foot has been key during this project that way we're not stripping these things out since we've been removing them quite often there we go once you crack them free they spin out by hand really nicely so that's good i just got back from home depot and this is what we're going to use this is 14 gauge wire and it is very strong very stiff but obviously flexible so i know this will get in there and it's pretty strong so i think it would push out a piece of rubber all right so i've snipped off a piece that's about the length of the vehicle or this line and i'll be very careful here going past this rubber we don't want to nick it or anything like that but so far we are past this little bend so it is working and now it's stuck and assume it's stuck somewhere in this hose right here all right well the fluid in this line is spilling all over the place anyway so i'm up front i'm gonna blow it out man i gotta say there can't be anything in this line seems clear to me all right so let's just blow out the other one while we're here okay rotting it from back there is not the easiest thing in the world to do with those hoses and i don't want to risk damaging them at least right now i don't so we're just going to do this from this end which is all metal and if i run into a lot of resistance i will stop i don't want to push anything further back i'd imagine if it got stuck it would get stuck in one of these bends here maybe and it's going in pretty nice okay no restriction we're probably about halfway down the line right now i just want to see if there's no i don't see any remnants of anything no black rubber nothing all right let's try this one out so i have enough here to cover the entire metal line and it'll reach past the rubber ones if i wanted it to and it's a little difficult because we're not dealing with the strongest piece of wire in the world okay let's go back out all right guys i'm not having any luck at all rotting this line out it seems free it feels like i'm getting it all the way to the back i'm gonna take the rear valve block out again i gotta say this gets much easier every time you do it okay don't fall don't fall all right so one thing i've noticed is that we do have new fluid coming through these lines that's obvious it's green but these are the two lines that connect to the valve block that lead to both rear strut and it's kind of hard to tell some of it already dripped out but this is old fluid and when i was messing with it in the last video it was cold as well this is just nasty black old fluid which it think means that the valve block has some kind of blockage in it not allowing the fluid to get to these two very important lines that directly feed the struts now i had this entire valve block apart in the last video because i replaced all the seals for the solenoids and i looked in there and everything seemed fine i didn't find any pieces of anything but maybe i missed something so i think i might have to take some of this apart again and we'll take another look all right take this clip out okay yeah i mean i definitely don't see anything nothing's obvious i already did this last time but let's blow a little air in there yeah i can see the orifice inside and it's totally clear the fluid would definitely get to the solenoid okay i'll gently reinstall this one here okay let's put this guy back there we go you see little guys have a spring that usually pops out when you remove them no big deal goes back on like that totally clear this is where the fluid would come out of and i can see the orifice where the fluid goes to the solenoid and everything is clear all right so i haven't found anything wrong with our valve block everything looks great but my friend ian did hook me up with a couple of known good valve blocks they are the same front to rear so at this point since i have to put a valve block in anyway i'm just going to put in one of his so i've pulled out the solenoids to make sure that they have been rebuilt just like i did with the other ones so i'm gonna go ahead and pop this last one back in and then this is going back in the car i did a little bit more rotting out i can't find anything in these lines check this out they sound totally clear so the way i look at it is we know we have the proper 3000 ish psi going to the tee that splits the pressure between the front and the rear the front works the front works fine now it's just the rear that doesn't work this line and this line both seem clear we're going to try a new valve block so that should eliminate the off chance that there is something really small in there or something odd going on with the valve block and i've also blown air through these and opened up the bleeders and they're clear up to that point i guess it's possible that they're clogged all the way at the strut but i gotta imagine that if anything went through this system it would have blocked up in the valve block first there are screens on everything and they're perfectly clean if the known good valve block doesn't fix the issue then i will go down the route of something electrical that is possible although i can activate these solenoids with a computer which i've obviously done and i can hear them moving but nothing's working so i don't know but uh i don't put anything past this car at this point so we're just going to keep trucking get the valve block in and well hope it works and then move on to the laptop all right take a look at the bleeder right there we'll blow some air through it all right that's clear and as you can tell that is old nasty fluid so nothing is getting past that valve block including i'd imagine any debris all right the new but rebuilt used valve block is back in and i can see why this line was probably leaking there's a lot of crud build up there so i'm going to go ahead and clean that up and you want to be gentle if you're going to clean up these mating surfaces because you really only get one shot at this we'd have to replace either that entire line running to the back or this shorter line running to the relief valve if we gouge this so just going to be very gentle with the wire brush and i'll get in here as well just doing this all by hand okay everything is back together including the little clamps that hold the lines together as you go down i'll leave the big plastic shield off because honestly i just want to get to starting the car and seeing if we fixed anything okay so i have the rear sitting low enough to where we'd still feel it raise up if it's going to but not low enough to where it would set off that critical ride height code which could disable the system so anyway let's go fire it up okay so the laptop is disconnected right now [Music] okay whatever i heard the hydraulic pressure there that's normal oh okay heard it again let's get rid of these warnings here is it going to tell us this thing is going up or down no and i don't feel anything going on right now either oh wait a minute i just felt something that could have been in the front though let's go check the fluid uh we still have a leak no gotta try and fix that right now wait a minute guys so i was just about to raise the car to check out that leak and check this out the back is staying up the back has never stayed up the back of my cl65 is it's not slammed it's it's lifted oh my gosh this is crazy could the valve block have done it what what could it have been it had to have been the valve block at this point i rotted out those lines i didn't feel anything at all and even though i took apart the valve block a second time it didn't see anything maybe just maybe there's something in there i don't know but if i can't figure out the smoking gun we are cutting that thing apart if not in this episode definitely in the next one we gotta find what's wrong with it but yes yes i've never been so happy to see this much wheel gap and salt falling this is salt from february by the way guys it is now november and this is all from the 12-hour road trip back in february from kansas to chicago look at all this stuff it's horrible you better believe if this thing makes it outside it's going to legit street quarters for a complete detail i'm going to treat it right but right now i'm just i'm a little excited i'm a little excited so anyway we have to fix this leak i swear if this line is damaged to the point where i have to order one from germany for like three weeks i'm gonna flip out because the project of this theme has basically been hurry up and wait for parts so okay let's go take a look at the leak okay so it's definitely coming from this line this connection right here which i did clean up and it is tight this is so frustrating okay normally i don't recommend over tightening anything these guys don't really need all that much to seal but we're gonna give it one more for the kids here i mean it's tight i couldn't imagine it needing to be tighter than this okay all right let's see i don't think that's gonna do anything stay up stay up wow that is crazy it's crazy this car is even capable of this kind of ride height this is nuts but anyway let's get these lift arms out of the way that way if it wants to lower to a normal level it can the lift arms aren't gonna be there to block it and i gotta say this feels good i haven't been able to easily remove the lift arms from underneath this car in many many months all right let's go ahead and fire it up there's our puddle well let's see is it gonna leak it's definitely not as bad as it was before before it was dripping out you could watch it the whole time hey let me clean this up a little all right there we go and yeah that little titan up there might have done it i don't see anything coming out right now oh man more good news i feel like i've had too much good news in the last few minutes here on this car like something's got to break right i mean or the suspension doesn't actually go up and down i don't know uh but at this point let's try hitting the button okay so we actually have an abc drive carefully light on so that button shouldn't do anything what this indicates right now is that the car has gone into a default mode where it just raises the entire suspension so you're not rubbing on anything that way you can make it home safely so let's go ahead and check the fluid that is the first thing we need to do just in case we introduce some air into the system it might not have any pressure any longer after that initial kind of pump up so let's take a look and i'm too excited to go get the tripod so i'm going to hold the camera do this with one hand i threw another quart in here because it was pretty dry so yeah we have the proper amount of fluid that is good now let's check out the codes in the system i'm hoping that it says low pressure that means we just have to pressurize the tank yes some pressure low current stored um hang on let's just check pressure live data 43 psi yes we just got to pressurize the tank that's it okay so if you guys have been around for the last few suspension videos then you know what i'm about to do here we have to inject a little bit of air pressure into the reservoir and that's gonna force the fluid uh into the pump and kind of blow out any air bubbles it might be air bound right now so you don't want to do this too much because you can blow this tank up which would not be fun so at some point this fluid should go down and we'll probably have to add another quart okay so we're at 100 psi now this thing is going to die i don't care and we need 3 000 psi so i'm just going to watch this live data and it should go up it's stuck at 101 come on now sometimes you got to rev it up a little these v12 sounds so good can't wait to drive it there we go 1016 130 145 159 okay now i'm not doing anything 188 it's going up let's rev it up a little bit more 200. okay let's check the fluid in case it went down nope we have not gotten the air bubble out we're at 300 psi now 330 348 i'll bring you guys in on the pressure you've been with me this far we're at 1100. come on baby we need 3 000. we're halfway there all right we're at 1800 2000 we're getting there we're getting there we're getting there all right 28 2900 that is perfect let's clear the codes out clear yes shut the ignition off for 10 seconds is this gonna work is this gonna work i think so i think this is finally it okay we'll go ahead and turn ignition back on at seven percent on the laptop here we're gonna make it no fault codes no fault codes detected we've been here before but this might be a little different let's go ahead and start it back up [Music] looking for this guy to to go down no light on in the dash let's check pressure again we should have had a burp oh we did we did have a burp we did have a burp look at that it's empty cool that's great okay uh let's fill it up quickly though outside of a brand new car with abc suspension i think this car has just about the cleanest fluid in the world part store they're 28 each which is not fun i bought two of them this morning it's all worth it right right all these euro cards that we spend all of our money on totally totally worth it do you guys ever question why you do this i do every once in a while but then i just take one of these cars out on the highway mash the throttle and it all kind of just melts away [Applause] i'm really hoping we'll be doing that soon oh this car is so dirty so full of oil uh pressure where are we at 2800 okay this system should definitely work now uh oh we got to back out we got to back out of the system that's right so you can't actually be in the control unit if you want to use the button inside so now we're out and let's see okay i'll just turn it off disconnect the multiplexer and let's just fire it up again okay you know what let's do this let's put it in gear oh all right hold on a second it went higher yeah definitely went higher there uh did this thing default to its highest position again why go down go down yeah it looks like it's defaulted to the high position again and it won't tell me in the cluster that it's going up or down but there's no warning light so let's get back to the computer all right let's see if we have any codes no codes all right let's go into active tests let's just start a rodeo and let's see this thing dance yes okay f3 there we go we still have good pressure and let's watch this car do its thing wow what a difference from before in the last video it sort of looked like it was doing a proper rodeo but it was actually just the front and now if you go to the rear you can tell the difference the rear is actually working the rear is working it's doing a legitimate rodeo so i'm going to let this do its thing for a little while and then we'll check the fluid level make sure we got all the air bubbles out of it but this is kind of a neat party trick that this car does my kids were very fascinated the first time they saw a rodeo and now i own a car that will rodeo all right so fluid level is good let's go ahead and stop the rodeo should go back to somewhat of a normal ride height now and it kind of does looks a little jacked up in the back lowered in the front and let's see if it said any codes during the rodeo i think it would have booted us out if it did no codes all right let's back out of the system let's take this thing outside all right so the car defaulted back to the super high position and when i press this we don't get any notification in the cluster so weird when the system didn't work at all like two videos ago it would always still tell us that it was going up even though it was doing nothing now that the system kind of works it doesn't say anything in the cluster that's so weird anyway let's back this guy out of here you know what let's just go for a ride right now with it super jacked up oh wow it's so nice that it's not rubbing in the back anymore it's freezing though oh one touch doesn't work all right and we're driving the car it's pretty bouncy oh it's got a lot of torque i'm just going to press the button down lower do something ah abc car too low that's when i hit the lower button weird let's take a look at it it doesn't look low to me it looks totally jacked up did something happen with these sensors oh this is bizarre it's doing absolutely nothing all right so i turned the ignition on and off and it still does nothing but we have no messages now if you guys remember in the very first video that i bought this car this does have some kind of aftermarket lowering module but it never did anything me and watch jr go could never actually get this thing to do anything it didn't matter if it was unplugged plugged in nothing uh the suspension still worked just like factory which it's not doing anymore okay so the car is sitting pretty level right now i think it's still higher than it should be though and if we take a look at the level sensors they're all very close to each other so this doesn't indicate an issue to me right now let's check out the voltage yeah this is good this is good it's all within spec everything's good all right let's go to control unit adaptations calibration of plunger sensors okay so when i hit f3 the front end should go super high well it moved successfully carried out okay good all right so we got that and i hear the car doing something all right let's try this load adjustment next okay load adjustment f3 please wait don't really see anything on the car during the load adjustment let's just hope it succeeds okay successfully carried out good let's check out codes [Applause] nothing all right let's back out of the system well first off it says no messages but when i press the suspension button uh just did it oh not check we'll get out of here it just did it and it even raised and lowered by itself yeah like it's going down right now show the people it worked that's why you should always have the camera rolling all right whatever let's back it out and see what it looks like it kind of looks a little bit higher than i would imagine but it's been so long since i've seen a normal one of these and we don't have any of the fender liners in the front so there's just a little bit more room behind it it looks a little bit more lifted but this looks pretty darn close okay i just pressed the raise button is it going up no just press the lower [Music] it's not doing anything it's the next day and after thinking about this this just seems like the control unit is freaking out to me nothing is happening in the cluster when i press the button and i'm not going to be able to give you guys a normal legit streetcars fashion explanation for this but what i did is something we call a circuit 30 reset and it's a very basic procedure you're literally just unplugging a control module this is a little different than just simply disconnecting the battery because some of these control modules have capacitors inside and they'll hold memory for a little while and with everything this car has been through and seeing as how the button on the inside doesn't do really anything it doesn't show anything in the cluster i just feel like the control unit is freaking out i know that's like a horrible technical explanation but just being in the car business for so long this is something people actually do even at the dealership if you have a situation where there are no codes everything seems to be working fine it should work and it's kind of rare for control modules to fail you unplug it you let it just completely wipe its memory clean and then plug it in so it was getting late last night so i just left it overnight i've just plugged it back in oh and this is the old school rentec lowering module that this car came with so there's a little controller in the ashtray it doesn't seem to work at all but here is where they spliced that into the wiring going to the abc hydraulic control unit which is that guy right there so anyway i just put the cover back on we're going to shut the hood and let's just go for a ride all right before we take off i want to see if pressing this button does anything in the cluster it did it once off camera and then it never did it again so we have some warning lights okay whatever all right here we go suit it hey there it is there it is when it did it before oh that was quick but okay i wasn't paying attention if it actually lifted the car or not i think it's going i hear stuff anyway let's lower it okay impossible for you guys to tell i did feel something though i felt something you guys have been around for a while you know that's my old chevy volt i sold it to a family member oh you don't know how good this feels all right let's see will it work again yes it says it's going up sweet if you guys watch the road trip home video from kansas i still have this issue where every once in a while nothing does anything at all doesn't work it's a little loose it's probably a bad wire by the door hinge or sometimes the control unit goes bad or maybe it needs a circuit 30 reset that fixes everything right guys i am driving this i am driving this on a major road and it feels so good it's not bouncy at all i can tell the suspension is working each strut has fluid and this is great smooth is glass too car wizard did the engine mounts and i believe the trans mounts before car track and surprisingly they're still in good shape and not broken after all that all right coming up to another light let us activate yes this is great guys this is an amazing sign and i can feel it going up let's see i'll hit it down you guys can't see this on camera but i can feel it it's going down it's going up and down the suspension on my cl65 amg is going up and it's going down and someone is honking at me i am one of those annoying vloggers right now i guess i don't care i just don't care this thing works it's working it doesn't leak there are no codes at all there's no lights on the dash other than some light bulbs and the washer fluid and the distronic plus adaptive cruise control doesn't work but that's not bad three lights on a cl65 that's basically like negative 10 lights now i can't beat on the car or anything it's not tuned we have the larger turbos larger fuel injectors but the computer has adjusted beautifully oh and here's that rentec module i've disconnected it it literally does nothing let's take a look at the cars ride height right now so this is in the lowered position and i gotta say it looks really normal it looks super even keep in mind i don't have the fender liners in here so in the front it might look a little bit higher because there's no black plastic directly behind it and this looks pretty normal in the back as well yeah i did rub on the tire a little bit during our last test drive when i got frustrated and just wanted to drive the car but nothing too bad didn't damage anything permanently i'm in the car i'm gonna press the button up and you can see the car rising i'll go ahead and press it down now and it goes down can we just take a moment to talk well we can't talk right now but can we take a moment to think about how much aggravation has gone into just that just that little bit of movement has caused i mean i i don't even want to count how many hours i have into this thinking about this too that counts when you're up late at night what's wrong with my car talking with your friends just a lot of mental efforts getting caught here in a windstorm and it's freezing out so i'm gonna end this soon but i'm pretty sure this is normal ride height for a cl65 it does look a little bit lifted i think it could look much better than this but all the sensors are reading properly now the car does have adjustable links all the way around so someone put those on but they're adjusted to the stock length and i think we can do some more adjustments with the computer as well but that is all for another day i am so happy i'm beyond happy you don't know how this makes me feel i'm just gonna go home and and pile the entire family in the car and take them out to the nicest restaurants i can find to celebrate oh wait no i'm not the cl is a four-seater i can't fit them i have too many kids i can't fit them all in here and this is turned in to basically a storage unit that's our extra car seat none of my kids have been in here yet there's stuff literally everywhere the trunk as well we have a cool air intake system from vrp for the next video so i think in the next v12 video we'll do the intake maybe we'll lower the car i got to put a bunch of panels on we have to clean this car up it's full of oily stuff all over the place and we're gonna make it look good we might make it sound good maybe i'll get it on the dyno i don't know but i can finally move on the repair part of the series is done hang on i'm definitely knocking on wood after saying that i might have just jinxed myself i definitely jinx myself i'm gonna go run around this entire forest and knock on every single tree so this car doesn't break but we should be done with the mechanical repairs on this car the oil leaks fixed the suspension works we can move on to the performance part of this series i think again knocking anyway uh with that guys i really hope you enjoyed this video i hope you've enjoyed this series if you've been watching these for the entire time and you ever run into an issue with your car or maybe your friends pulling their hair out just send them this series it will definitely make them feel a whole lot better that they're not in my shoes except i'm out of my shoes now which is great anyway rambling i hope you enjoyed this one give it a thumbs up share the video subscribe if you're new most importantly have a great day i'll catch you all in the next video [Music] foreign

Channel: LegitStreetCars

Views: 439,840

Keywords: CL65 AMG, LEGITSTREETCARS V12, MERCEDES V12, FIXING MERCEDES SUSPENSION, ABC SUSPENSION FIX, TWIN-TURBO V12 MERCEDES

Id: B1rzBqoO2vU

Length: 34min 21sec (2061 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 18 2021