Come on Koni make some new load levelers for us and the 365GT4C.
These levelers were made under a French licence that now belongs to Monroe. On an industrial perspective it would make more sense to customize existing Nivomat (adjust the level of oil and gas pressure to our cars). That's what Wilbers offers for Harleys. Not cheap.
I remember my uncle had some sort of station wagon, I think it was a full size ford. It had a set of air shocks in the back. There was a valve stem looking devise back by the rear tailgate. When they went on trips and loaded it up they would stop by a gas station and use the air hose to raise the rear of the car back up to normal drive height.
These were the max-air. Much more primitive. The Nivomat ("automatic level" in French) is really the same as our cars: when the absorbers are bottoming down some oil is pushed inside the gas chamber, which reduces its volume (and increases pressure). It seems Koni was sourcing the levelers design externaly: even the 412 self levelers were derived on the same patent as used by Mercedes. So at the end of the day, the patent & design is not theirs, hence why they do not want to re-issue these. (?) At the end of the day, maybe that fitting 4 orginal absorbers in the back could be the way to go: as these are adjustable it should be easy (?) to halve the dampening force so that the combined effect would match the stock setup (single absorber)
My 412 has ominously started to sit 2 cm lower on the right side (no difference with engine running or not, rear doesn't sag otherwise). I haven't had a chance to get it up on a rack to determine the cause, but with the expectation that it's the beginning of a slippery slope I called Performance Shock with a view to replacing the self-leveling rear shocks with "normal ones". They quoted me $4200 for 4 custom built KONI dampers with adjustable spring seats. I'll get it up on a rack shortly but my guess is that I'll likely be headed in this direction in the near future. There is the added benefit that their location in California wine country presents an excuse/opportunity for a nice day trip to pick them up... Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
@Britward : I'd rather keep an oleopneumatic suspension on a 412. Retrofiting regular dampers would be crude and quite expensive based on your quote. Replacing the spheres is not such a costly or horrendous job, and sourcing the "dampers" is possible through the usual suspects. I would also assume that repairing the damper should be possible, as at the end of the day, this is some king of glorified syringe, much more simple than a regular damper (all the complexity is externalized in the pump, sensing piston and the spheres).
