When I park anywhere that is level or nose down, the bags stay up, but when I park in my driveway which is sloped down toward the street, the rear of my 2007 H2 almost immediately starts to dump the air out of the rear bags.

I am told it would not be bag leak, because they would leak all the time, not just when the truck was parked nose high.

HEP ME! HEP ME! Any ideas?

 

It's a bag leak. Where the bottom of your bags roll back up inside tends to dry rot and crack. If your sitting level the center support that the bag sits on seals them up just enough to keep them from leaking. When you park on a slope the frame will tilt or shift just enough to roll the bottom of the bag to where the cracks are exposed. While you're driving they become exposed also...meaning your compressor is working more to keep them up.


I had the same problem. I choose to keep the air bag setup. If you want to keep the air bags, replace them with OEM/Firestone bags. I bought cheap replacement bags and blew them out a lot. Of course, most of the guys on here will recommend that you install coil springs. I have one H2 with air bags and one with coil springs. I get too much sag when hauling a trailer with the H2 with coils springs.

 

KruBruder, thank you for that info... I will look into replacing the bags, at least with new bags that will help troubleshoot the problem if it happens again after new bags are installed. At 90k miles, I am sure new bags are due.

Thanks!

 

Bags are due. don't wait. the more you drive it like that the more of a workout your compressor is getting. They are cheap and very easy to replace by yourself.

 

I have rear air too and I think I have the same symptom - air releasing when truck is parked. Can anyone confirm what exactly normal operation is supposed to be?

There is the button on the dash to activate ride height control. If pushed once, a light flashes and you can hear the compressor turn on and you can get out and watch the rear end raise up.

Should the bags then stay full at this point even if the ignition is turned off?

 

DOWORK, I have replaced my air bags and they solved the leak. After owning my Hummer H2 for four years, I finally read the manual regarding the air bags after I installed the new air bags last week.

Here is the skinny... When you turn your truck ON, the air bags will fill automatically to an automatic ride height. If you turn the truck OFF the air bags should hold their height, since it is a closed system, any lowering of the bags would indicate a leak or height sensor or compressor module malfunction. I changed out my bags PER KruBruder's recommendation and that seemed to fix the problem.

Ride height adjustment button. The MANUAL says, you can increase your height adjustment to clear rocks etc, push the bottom button on your dash, if the truck is doing LESS THAN 40 mph, the air bags will fill, causing the rear of the truck to raise 4 to 6 inches. The light will blink while the bags are filling and when it gets to the max height, the light will stay ON.

BUT... If the truck exceeds 40 mph, the air shocks will AUTOMATICALLY return to their NORMAL ROAD HEIGHT ADJUSTMENT and the LIGHT on the height adjustment button will go OUT.

In other words, you can ONLY use the height adjustment button on the dash to raise the truck to it's highest height BELOW 40 mph... go above 40 mph and the truck will begin to LOWER back down to the NORMAL HEIGHT LEVEL.

I thought my compressor was bad or the sensor was bad, so while driving down the road, I asked my wife to break out the MANUAL and when she read it to me, I realized why the truck always ended back up in the NORMAL RIDE HEIGHT when I got up to highway speeds... because it will ONLY hold the MAX HEIGHT when standing still or at speeds lower than 40 mph.


I bought my rear air bags from BuyAutoParts on ebay, they were OEM Firestone brand for $329.00 for THE PAIR as seen here... Pair Brand New Genuine Rear Left Right Air Spring Assemblies for Hummer H2 | eBay

Hope that info helped!

The bags were not hard to put on, but removing the air hose was a BIOTCCCCH! My hands look like I reached into a shredder.

The problem is, the engineers did not leave more than a few inches of extra hose at the top of the air spring to get a grip on, but I found a trick.

I used a razor knife to slice a large hole in the side of the bag to deflate the bags, then I used the razor knife to cut THE ENTIRE BAG OFF, leaving only the top plastic head piece... I cut around the bag, just below the metal strap that goes around the top of the rubber... it really was not hard to cut once you get the first cut going.

Having the entire rubber part of the bag removed, allowed me to ROTATE the top of the air spring head plate over so I could get full access to the air hose.

THEN, I just used a flat head screw driver to push down on the outside ring of the hose coupler while pushing in and pulling out on the hose and it popped right out.

Prior to cutting out the rubber part of the entire bag... I played with the air hose for an hour and could not get it out, there was just no room to get my hands in there correctly. The passenger side is even harder than the driver side... the access is blocked by frame and suspension beams on the passenger side that do not appear on the driver's side.

I tried vise grips, needle nose pliers, a Crescent Wrench spaced just right... none worked for me, but pushing directly IN on the release ring with a flat head screw driver while pushing and pulling the hose worked INSTANTLY.

THE VIDEO BELOW WAS A SUPER HELP FOR ME... I mounted my floor jack on the trailer hitch, just like this guy did, then placed jack stands on the frame just ahead of the rear wheels, it made things way, way easy.

 

Also make sure that the plastic air line isn't scored where it goes into the fitting. I put it in the new bag fitting that way once and had a leak. I ended up cutting about 1/2" inch off to get some smooth line in there to get a good seal. After replacing a couple cheap bags, I had cut so much off that I had to get a new line. I think the new line was only about $17 at the dealer.