Nice. I can't believe how well you did - here in the states, just one air shock will cost that much, un-installed. DAMHIK.
If I'd gone to BMW, the compressor, struts and install would have been north of £7k
As it was, I bought a WABCO OEM compressor, manifold, valves and relay from the manufacturer in Germany, and a pair of ARNOTT "airbags" (which on this car are closer to being a strut that wraps around the actual strut) which are Continental OEM "airbags" in drag... because Continental aren't allowed to sell you the whole bag/strut assembly for "reasons".
Parts came to £800, and my mechanic charged me £600 in labour (a full day) = £1400
I say £1800 of cost, because I bought a "german" compressor from a German supplier, which turned out to be a repackaged Chineese compressor and was both terrible quality and faulty. They have refunded me what it cost but are refusing to refund the £400 I paid across customs fees and installation.
The silver lining of having that noisy piece of garbage on the car, was that you could hear the compressor running all the time (not so with the OEM Wabco), which highlighted an air leak, and lead to the replacement of the bags.
I should have been suspicious when a genuine BMW compressor with a production data of November 2022 was burned out by July 2024!
All in all, I think I've done ok so far... a 10 year old BMW that originally cost £80k+ is probably a bad idea for most, but doing a max of 6k miles a year, I think it will work out for us. And it's fricking lovely.
