Content > Pasi's BMW E30 M3

Little update from last month, even though the project has currently come to a long way I’ll try to make a chronological update of how things went. Today it’s about the suspension work I did this time.

First was to remove the suspension components from the car. As I was doing it by myself I used jacks and lifters to get the pieces off. Front end was pretty simple, just put a lift under the subframe and remove the bolts. It came out as one piece with the control arms, rack and hubs. I noticed that the motormounts were almost cracked so it’s was also time to reinforce those. These later style subframe have the factory reinforcements, but they are not enough. Since I was quite tight on schedule I did the easier way and installed the reinforcement pieces to the topside of the subframe. This lifts the engine a bit, but since I’m also installing the 740iL motor mounts which lower the engine I though this would just compensate things :). Also some reinforcements for the swaybar mounts was done. Little metal work again a vola, nice little reinforcement pieces for free. Then the subframe was sandblasted and painted. For the front I also installed powerflex control arm bushings.

At the rear there a little bit more work. Again the stuff came out of the car pretty easily. Powerflex bushings were used everywhere, so to replace to old factory bushings. One major lack in the standard rear beam is that there is no camber/toe adjustments. This is pretty bad when lowering the car since you are forced to change the geometry. I acquired ready machined pieces to mach with BMW eccentric bolts. This way you can built camber/toe adjustment in a simple and effective way. More info you can read from Gustave’s site. I was planning to do the reinforcements described in the link, but since I was forced to get the car back on it’s wheel I decided that I would get spare control arms later and do them ready and just swap them some day.

Changing the bushing was pretty easy as I had compression tools at the shop. Removing the control arm bushing was easy by creating this simple tool shown in the pictures. Just screw the inner nuts and the bushings are pushed our from the outside. Installing new one was very easy, you could do it with simple tools or by hands.

Swaybars were changed to H&R kit that includes new bushings and adjustable front and rear swaybars. Thanks Frank @ Orange Tuning.
The car already had Spax adjustable struts so only thing that was troubling was the rear ride height. I solved this at this time by using -60mm springs from Weitec. Cheap alternative before I get budget for some real suspension components.

Now the next important parts would be front topmounts that would have camber/caster/height adjustments. Some Gr. A replicas maybe. Next post will about the assembling of the car and what having a full race cage means when you try to put it back together again