Who's got experience with airbag suspensions?

[86turbodsl]

Question for the airbag guys -

Does anyone have experience with airbag suspensions on a B6/B7 platform, related to the following questions:

1. Can you run OEM or near-OEM heights (Lowered is really tough in this state. Too much road debris, potholes, etc)
2. Is the ride any better than OEM sport springs (see above RE potholes)
3. How's the durability?

Basically, i live in a state with atrocious roads, and have a bad back. Smooth, controlled ride is the goal.
I know airbags on trucks helps with a rough ride a lot, but not sure how well it works on a B6.

Thoughts?

[AUndrRated4]

Airride is great. I have been running air for about 15 years. I am running airlift suspension with accuair management. You can run oem suspension height but will encounter some stiffness with that much air in the bags. The OEM sport height will be much better ride quality on airbags. The accuair management allows for 3 different settings with just a touch on the touch pad you can achieve regular ride height, slammed as can be and oem height for driveways and speed bumps.
Here is a video of my car when I used bagyard struts with bilstein shocks to show you the different heights. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Pmf2lAkIhA

[EuroxS4]

You can run oem or stock liek height with bags. However most people use them to be able to lower their vehicles. In terms of ride comfort, audi has been using air ride suspensions in their audi a8's and they ride pretty damn nice. The most cost effective setup for air ride is a bag over coil setup. The most expensive part of that system if the manifold and management system. It depends how the system is setup but normally they do ride much nicer than stock if setup right.

[86turbodsl]

If i were to do this, i have no interest in varying heights and i have no interest in slamming it. I think that's silly. Old man i guess. I'm all about the performance of systems not the look.

[EuroxS4]

Its hard to know what your expecting vs what your actually gonna end up with. Will it ride better in terms of comfort at stock height. Most likely, is it gonna be a crazy noticeable difference??Possibly or barely noticeable. It will be an improvement and question is how much and will it be worth the 3-4 grand you need to spend to make it happen

Beware of buying used setups I have seen plenty of people get burned when one of the shocks is bent or a bag is leaking or not holding air or the manifold has failed. Common on airlift system.

[86turbodsl]

Sounds like a big risk for potentially no improvement. Thanks for the data point.

[EuroxS4]

No worries, I mean you can try but as mentioned its hard to judge hows its gonna ride vs what it does now, in terms of your expectations you know. Its alot of money to invest.

[Mike Tries]

I don't have experience with air ride on Audis, but my Model S and X have (and had) it. It is fantastic, but my very first thought when I first tried it was "oh, the ride is 100% controlled by the dampers". Want a cloud-like ride? Buy soft dampers. My S is an old P85, so it has stiff damping, though I am not sure if all the Ss are like that (some of them had coil springs). It feels very sporty, and if it didn't occasionally adjust its height, you might never know it was the air version.

As was said previously, setting it higher necessarily stiffens the air spring, but I bet softer compression damping on the damper could tune some of that out if there is some adjustability.