We got this Lincoln and the air shock's Warning Light kept coming on. We stopped at our local hayseed mechanic and asked him to take a look. He was in a fussy mood and kept going on about how those automatic shocks were the WORST thing ever put on a Lincoln.

He told us that if there were no valves to pump them up, then he wouldn't be able to help us for less than 17 hundred dollars!

He crawled under her and looked under the hood as well. He basically said tough luck, unless you want to pay big bucks

Later on, my mom gets the manual out and learns that there is a switch in the boot/trunk that activates the automatic air shocks. The switch is to be set to OFF whenever the car is in tow, and then you can turn it back on after towing.

That solved the 1700 dollar problem! A switch in the trunk was turned off and the automatic air shocks were not working in the car

Those air ride level shocks were very unreliable. I never heard about the switch before. A friend of mine had a Mark VIII that had its shocks go out and lived the rest of its life with its rearend drooping. It would be funny to find out that it was just a switch.

The idea behind the rear suspension was to have the air ride to make it comfortable. Many people do not know that when you lift your car off the ground or tow the car you need to flip the switch or you WILL ruin the bags. Cadillacs ran a similar system except they did it with the shocks themselves. They are just as expensive to fix. If you don't take care of the system and the car itself, then yea you will have problems. So now it isn't the car that is the problem, it's the design of the suspension, and the responsibility of the driver of the car to take car of it.

that would have sucked to have payed $1700 for the guy to have just flipped the switch

he probably wanted to hear you say you were gunna pay lol so he could flip the switch and make big bucks for it lol