2006 BMW M3

[Jake]

Drove down to Richmond yesterday to swap springs with Felton. He had H&R Sport springs and I allegedly had Eibach Sportline springs, which are lower and stiffer than the H&R's. Felton wanted lower/stiffer, I wanted taller/softer. Win.

So I get down there and we put my car in the air, and I pull the first rear spring. Thanks, lying PO, they're Vogtland and not Eibach like you said. No matter, Felton still wants 'em so we press on.



This was my first time working with a strut assembly that uses a pinch bolt at the bottom to hold the assembly to the wheel hub. The E36 uses a few bolts to keep it all in place, and as such, if the bolts don't fit, the whole thing just doesn't go back together. With a pinch bolt, the assembly can be 90% of the way there, but misaligned, and you can still snug up the bolt with nothing really secured. D'oh.

Soooo when I backed the car out of his garage at 5:30 PM and had some awful clunks and weird steering feel, we decided limping it over to Delta V was the best option as Zack was there after hours and could get it on the lift in good lighting.

Problem 1: my front right strut was not really secured at all. This resulted in me holding the wheel/hub assembly up while Zack air-gun-brap'd it back into place. Now I know how to get these things lined up, for the next time I remove them. Which leads us to...

Problem 2: I'm missing some hardware and the front springs are not really seated correctly. Somehow, when the PO had the Vogtland springs installed, they didn't re-use one of the metal "spring pockets". So, I only had one to re-install, we couldn't figure out how it all went together, and left it out. These pockets also have bearings in them which stayed attached to my old top hats. Lesson learned - buy all-new shit when you do this kind of job. The pockets are $16 each (with bearings) and would have saved me a lot of time.

So now the car is home and parked until the pockets show up (FCP claims the 28th), at which point I can rip the front suspension out again, install them, and put it back together.

If nothing else, the softer springs combined with four new shocks make the car ride really well. Always some frustration with a new-to-you chassis and unknown work from sketchy owners.