Well, I've had a bit of a nightmare week. As I was replacing the front n/s shock-absorber with the new spring, ready for the MOT on Saturday, the strut-insert burst in my face. To get an extra couple of inches clearance at the top and get it under the wing I'd been pushing the damper down into the insert. I figured they sit quite far down with the short-springs anyway, but eventually, probably after doing it several times, I must have plunged it further than its full operating depth and it popped, sinking the insert completely into the strut.
You wouldn't think pushing it down would pop it, considering the forces on it under load, but once its down far enough the top seal just fails under the pressure of the oil. You can have SPAX, as with most adjustable-inserts, re-filled and the seal replaced if you can be bothered to send it back to the manufacturer and pay the cost, but with time of the essence I just bought a new one.
Larkspeed in Leeds were the cheapest, though the price had gone up from £90 to £112 [and £118 now for the shortened!] for a single insert, but they claimed to have the part in stock and would have it to me by Tuesday the latest. Today I rang them to say it'd been a full week since they rang to confirm the order and still no insert. After half an hour they rang me back to say the insert had been specially ordered from SPAX, who were now lacking correct parts and can't build them until the end of October. I wish they had told me that last week as I'm now waiting on a refund...
Bilstein - fixed damping-rate and pricey, nothing but good reviews.
I rang DC Performance.co.uk, who also claimed to have the part in stock and it would take 2 or 3 days. Before parting with any money this time I asked if they could check the insert is definitely in stock, which they are not, so it's not looking hopeful for any existing stock anywhere. I will be contacting SPAX directly from now on.
Monroe Gas-Matic - strong, but ride too soft.
So what are the short-term options? There are no ride-adjustable inserts in stock and available now, so it looks like i'm now bound to non-adjustable inserts. Stiffened Bilstein inserts are £62 each, where OEM-replacement ones can be had for as little as £20. With the springs this low, I have no idea what would work best. The sportier, better-brand damper might last longer under the stress and be a better match for the adjustable SPAX on the other side. Alternatively, the cheap, softer damper might compress better under the load and a pair will only cost £40 should the o/s one need swapping too. Another option is to replace both with Monroe gas-filled dampers for £123. The blurb says they are a heavy-duty design for trucks and vans, but according to this thread they are just too soft and will cause me to bottom out. So, £60 for one Bilstein it is, or take a chance on a cheap KYB. Hmmm, stress.
Well my MOT, the UK roadworthiness test, has come round and the E21 is just too low to get into my local testing station, let alone up onto the ramps. This is where height-adjustble coilovers would be worth their £650, as even if I can get the car onto the ramps, an attempt to raise the wheels off the ground will cause the short springs to become loose in the pans. The solution to this problem is still cheaper than coilovers - shortened strut-inserts from this post at ~£400, but I'll still have to find somewhere with ramps low enough to take her.
Seems to me the easiest and cheapest overall solution is to just swap longer springs in for the test and put the chopped ones back on later. Seems like quite a lot of effort just for a 30-minute inspection, but that's motoring in the UK, we're at the mercy of the MOT and it sees more cool cars off our overcrowded roads than insurance write-offs ever would.
Slight length difference. The red SPAX was a -40mm too.
A nice set of yellow APEX -40mm springs set me back just £80 from eBay. They are a lot longer than I remember though, which heralded me finally buying some spring-compressors, £17.99 and bringing the grand total of this years test to a ton before I've even had it inspected... not good.
Fitting the rear springs was a doddle, but the fronts threw up a few problems. Getting the cut spring off was easy enough, but even under compression the longer one was never going to fit in the space available. After damaging my newly filled wheel-arch and bursting one of my strut-inserts - nightmare - I started looking for a better guide on replacing springs and find out if it can ever be done with the strut and brake-line still attached, but one doesn't seem to exist - a good validation for this and other blogs! I did, however, find a Youtube video of some guys fitting H&R springs without removing the shock, which did give some clues from about 3min30 onwards:
PROCESS:
Rear Springs -
1. Follow the steps in THIS POST to remove and re-fit the rear shock-absorbers, swapping the cut-spring for the new ones, obviously.
Front Springs [without removing strut, steering or brake-line] -
1. Raise the car and remove the corresponding front wheel. [It makes life easier to drop the front on axle-stands and remove both wheels, doing both springs together.]
2. Undo the top-nut from the shock-absorber, located on the suspension turret under the bonnet, using a 19mm wrench and 8mm open-end spanner at the top of the strut-insert to stop it from rotating.
3. Disconnect the brake-pad sensor wire by simply pulling it apart at the join behind the disc and sliding the rubber-mount free of the bracket.
4. Remove the earth-lead from the strut by undoing the bolt with a 10mm wrench.
5. Remove the bracket holding the brake-line to the strut using a 10mm wrench and open-end spanner. [This is essential to free the brake-line enough for it to tilt forward without having to remove the hose and drain the brakes. Without freeing the bracket, the brake-line will be stretched to breaking.]
** If the spring is still under compression without the weight of the car on it, use spring-compressors to hold it short enough to loosen the top spring-pan away from the turret.
*** The strut can be tilted out far easier with the track-rods unbolted, using a 17mm wrench and moved out of the way, but mine wasn't budging easily and there is enough room if you can push the steering-arm down enough.
6. Remove the four nuts holding the anti-roll bar brackets to the sub-frame using a 17mm wrench and open-end spanner. The anti-roll bar should drop down and remove tension from the two struts.
7. Tilt the shock-absorber strut out of the wheel-arch, remove the top spring-pan and spring.
8. Drop the new spring onto the bottom pan and reverse the above steps, using spring compressors if necessary.
Wheel-arch gap a little more prominent. Was it really that much before?!
Hacking out the inner wheel-arches at the back to make the 16x9s fit left them in a right state, with a big gap up inside the wing. Being where it is, the gap is wide open to dirt and water flinging up off the wheel ready to rot the body from the inside out, so as a temporary measure I covered the area in ally-tape. It worked well, but was never going to last long. I figured the inner-arch would be considered a structural part of the body and would need a steel fillet welding in, but it doesn't appear to be the case so fibre-glass will do.
The area is a bit big for filling in though, so I shot up to Halfords and bought a square-metre of fibre-glass matting, £4.29. You need resin to apply it, which is a bit dearer. A kit is available for £9.99 that includes a small bottle of resin and a small mat, otherwise resin starts at a fiver and hardener is extra. The recommended resin is polyester-based, so it stretches, but I figure that marine epoxy-resin, which can be used for fibre-glass, will do the job as it may not be as flexible, but sure is waterproof and rock hard. I also happen to have a litre of the stuff left over from some carbon-fibre projects a few years ago.
I weighed the fibre-glass mat up to the whee-arch and cut it into rough shapes. The instructions say to coat the mat in resin and then stick it, but I found it just as easy and a little less messy to brush a little resin onto the surface, then stick the pieces of mat on dry and brush in heaps of resin over the top. The epoxy is quite thick and stiffens quickly, so this may the only workaround method using this stuff. It's certainly done the trick, the fibre-glass is as solid as the metal and has stuck well even to the rough under-seal surface, lets just hope it doesn't flex too much and crack away. It should see me through the MOT next week and that's the main thing, but at least there's no mud being flung up into the wing anymore. A quick coat of red-primer and the tester may not even notice the difference...
The car survived a trip with 3 people in and no scrubbing at all on the 16x9s, which I found very surprising, but still I figure the arches are good to finish off. I've neatened up the pulled lips and made a start to filling in and re-sculpting the shape of the wheel-arches, but progress has been slow and my intentions of selling the complete project this summer are looking unlikely. I spoke to the guy who did the re-spray for me originally and he said to get the arches as good as could be and pass it back over to him to smooth them off and repaint them without having to go over the whole car again. Great, though I can't keep hurling money at it, and with more to do over summer I've had less time to spend on the E21 and more time spent enjoying driving it on the new wheels for a few weekends in the sunshine like I intended, not just the odd trip to work. Oh and there is the matter of my daily driver needing MOT attention, but that's a different story.
Never the less, both the o/s arches have begun to take shape. Getting the lips off the bigger wheels and tyres was too extreme a job for my arch-rolling kit, so I had to pull them out with grips in the end. This meant a fair bit less grinding on the o/s rear wheel arch and none at all needed up front. The arch-lip needed to be low for as much tuck as possible, I don't like the cut-arch look, so I got the pulled out lip roughly in line with the slope of the arch and built it up flush with P38 filler. This is as close to the look of those European BBS'd E21s as I could figure, with a slight flare to the lip rather than the flat-edged look of the original arches. This is probably the easiest method of smoothing and saves on a bit of body-filler, enough of which is being used already.
I haven't touched the nearside arches yet, the main thing putting me off being the n/s rear one that was used to test fit those oversized Yokohama tyres and has suffered greatly from the spinning-disc. With the extra lip cut off the rigidity has been lost and the general shape of the arch has deformed, as well as more tyre being visible, about 10mm of tuck being lost. I guess my only options are to try and spot-weld the rough section of lip back on that was cut too far, which I still have, and rebuild the shape of the entire arch in filler, or buy a patterned-part wheel-arch off eBay for £25, cut out the current one, weld in the new one, smooth it off, pull the lip out and fill all that in. Well, there's no doubt the first method is cheaper and a lot less work, but this is a large area to be filling and smoothing and a wide margin for error, plus I don't even know if the bent arch will accept the bit I cut off without messing it up even further... watch this space!
They had to be ordered from Poland so took a couple of weeks to arrive, but it was worth it for the £105 delivered as they are very nicely machined and finished. They are an easy straight swap with the stock top-mounts, I've covered the process at the bottom, and I only encountered one snag where the silver steel bush, in the centre of the top-mount bearing, wouldn't quite fit over the top of the strut-insert. Using a bolt as a drift I managed to gently tap the bush down onto the strut-insert with a hammer. This mushroomed the top of the bush, so once it was very tightly fitted to the strut it would no longer fit into the bearing! A lot of reaming later using an old file and the bush would just about fit enough into the bearing to get the top-nut on and draw the bush up as it was tightened on. If it wasn't for that one snag, the plates would have been fitted in 20 minutes per side, so a good bit of advice would be to use a bit of oil or WD40 when fitting the bush to the strut-insert, or heat it first to get it on and allow it to cool again before slotting it into the bearing.
Now fitted, they're a doddle to adjust with the allen-head bolt setup, even with the wheel on and without lifting the car. As the new plates don't have a rubber shock-mounts like the stock items, I figured there would be a lot more road-noise with just metal on metal and there is, but not nearly as much as I expected. There's a bit of a knock going over big bumps, but I don't know if this is just a louder transmission to the body than the stock mounts, or if the giant spring-pan of my stock struts is hitting the body when it flexes enough. The big spring-pans mean I can't run the camber-plates fully over to the negative side and to get the amount I have now they are sitting awfully close to the body while the car is stationary, so I can imagine them contacting with enough rotation in the suspension. The only solution to this problem is smaller diameter spring-pans, i.e GAZ coilovers and another £700... watch this space, probably for some time.
Silver Project are an independent engineering company in Poland and make these along with a lot of other cool bits for different cars, check them out on Facebook [] or their store on eBay [http://myworld.ebay.co.uk/silver-project-pl/].
Quick video of the plates in action and showing the amount of tilt:
FITTING PROCESS:
1. Lift the front of the car, remove the corresponding wheel.
2. Grip the strut-insert to stop it from turning and remove the top-nut using a 19mm deep-socket.
3. Push the wheel-hub down using your foot so the top of the strut-insert drops out of the top-mount and can be moved to one side.
4. Support the top-mount from below, undo the three nuts holding it in place using a 13mm wrench and lower the top-mount out of the wheel-arch.
5. Fit the camber-adjustable top-mount from below and replace the 13mm nuts and washers.
6. Undo the four allen-head bolts on the adjusting-slider of the top-mount so it moves freely from side to side, using an M4 allen-key/socket.
7. Apply grease or a little oil to the smooth part of the strut-insert just below the top-thread so it can be easily drawn into the bearing.
8. Pressing the hub down with your foot again to allow the strut to be moved around, locate the top of the strut-insert into the silver bush of the top-mount.
9. Once the strut-insert is about 1mm into the bush, there should be enough of the threaded part poking out of the top to get the top-nut on and draw the strut up into the bush as the nut is tightened with a 19mm deep-socket. [The strut-insert will likely need gripping further down to stop the whole thing turning with the wrench.]
10. With the wheel either on or off, slide the camber-adjuster to gauge the angle and make sure the spring-pans on the shock aren't contacting the body-turret, then tighten up the four allen-head bolts with an M4 allen-key/socket to hold it in the desired position. [There is not a lot of headroom in these smaller BMWs, especially if you're using larger stock struts.
11. Replace the wheel, drop the car and enjoy your new crazy-cambered or nicely straightened-up front wheels! There are a few steps to this one, but provided you don't hit any fitment snags, it's a quick and easy job if you know the suspension setup.
Tried out the 8Js on the front with the new 195 Toyo T1Rs using 20mm spacers and there's a lot more room at the arch-lip now. The tyre doesn't catch at all turned hard-left, thought it would going over a bump. Hard-right the tyre is still catching the front valance slightly, but about 1cm cut away should be enough now and a little off the fender where it protrudes from the bumper - none of the bumper itself though. I had hoped to get away with smaller spacers on the front, but even with the 20mm spacers from the rear, the inside rim of the wheel is still 5mm inboard of the 15x7Js and there is not a lot of headroom.
I just haven't found time to try out the 9Js on the rear today as the valve is bust in one and on the other, about 6 inches of the bead has just been refusing to seat. My leg just couldn't take any more foot-pumping so I got hold of an air-compressor from a friend and took the tyre to nearly 90psi this morning, but it still wasn't having any of it. Eventually, after two goes deflating the tyre almost completely and trying to brush in soap between the tyre and rim, then taking it back up to about 65psi, the bead finally popped. The maximum pressure rating on the tyre is 50psi, though it says use no more than 40 to seat the bead, so it just goes to show that when the seal is tight enough it can take over twice that and still not seat. Bead-blaster machines can jet up to 200psi in one go and that doesn't even shred the tyre to bits so I'd be keen to know at what pressure a good new tyre would rupture at. Even so, always take the utmost care when inflating tyres past their rated pressures at home!
Apart from 4 new valve-cores (£2.99) and a valve removal-tool (£4.99) from Halfords, I've had to do yet more spending on parts as the project can't move on without them and I want to be getting somewhere near finished next weekend when we have the bank-holiday off. First up are adjustable camber-plates for the front, a must for style and it will likely give me a bit more room to play with before starting to cut. They're not approved for sale in the UK, so lets hope they make it here from Poland before the weekend - fingers crossed eh! Looking forward to these, though quite pricey @ £105 delivered, but whatever, they're the only ones of their kind. It's also time to stop digging my heels in and buy another set of spacers to go on the front, swapping the ones over from the rear is becoming a chore. I'd hoped to get some alloy ones to save hub weight, but again for easy access, the right centre-bore without more spigot-rings and to get the bolt-on kind I want, yep you guessed it, more steel ones. Another £59, oh well, roll on next weekend.
As you can see, the arch was sat on the tyre something awful with the 9" wide wheels at the back and the 225/45/16 rubber on...
A bit more arch persuasion...
Credit card clearance!
Or is it? The arch is still sitting on the tyre a little. The car just about rolls, but there's nowhere for the tyre to go either on a bump or with the weight of the driver...
It looks very flush and tidy, but something drastic will have to be done.
I love the old Melbers, but couldn't resist buying some bigger, wider rims to fill out my arch clearance. I've ended up with 16x8 for the front, which should be ok with 20mm spacers, and 16x9 for the back. They say it can't be done without cutting the arches. Well, I'm going to have to find a way, because I need that 3.5" lip and I ain't cutting.
9s stick out a bit even with just 20mm spacers...
The 8s below are for the front, but fit the rear with a bit more clearance than the 9s...
...but lets face it, they're not deep enough!
Fat rims.
With a bit of negative camber the rim is not far from the arch-lip and I think a stretched tyre will go under, but a bit more rolling will be necessary...
Roller skate style!
9s may need a little more spacing on the back to get off the strut and trailing arm...
And no, you may have guessed, they're not real split-rims, they're one-piece replicas and cost less than £400 delivered from royal_wax on eBay. A genuine set of BBS splitties has been floating around on there too, yours for £1600 without tyres, so I think I'll suffer with the replicas for now. The finish is a bit cheap and tacky, but hey, I'll be painting them up in Panama Beige anyway and I wouldn't be doing that to real ones. Even so it's been anther expensive week and I've got to find some rubber this week... I'm thinking 205_40_16 front, maybe Falken, and 225_40_16 rear Toyo T1-R, so let's hope I can get another cheap deal through work and that should save me a few hundred quid! I wish someone would hurry up and buy my Melbers - surely with the Toyo T4s stretched on they're worth £300 - come one people!
I was so keen to test out the o/s/r wheel-arch I rolled in last week that I left the locking wheel-nut key on the wheel and sped off. This is the one bit of kit you don't want to lose, as I couldn't get the wheels off to paint, chop, or even roll the n/s/r arch off the tyre [which has been smoking and squeaking all week] until my replacement key came on Friday. Needless to say it's been a busy weekend...
I started by taking 2 coils out of the uncut n/s front spring to compare it to the o/s with a single coil removed and it wasn't a lot lower and not sitting on the tyre thankfully, so I chopped the o/s down to match it. With 2 coils taken from each of the front springs that's slightly over 2kg off the chassis, which should in part make up for my heavy steel spacers.
Above shows the original height of the SPAX spring, a drop of 40mm from stock.
Now with a single coil removed, above, the car sits at about -55mm from stock, give or take. That's low! But not low enough...
2 coils removed and she's as low as she'll go on the normal-length strut inserts, but there's still just about enough clearance to get one finger into the arch. Don't seem to be getting any scrubbage off the tyres, which is good considering
Now we're really scraping...
...but so is the sump! 2 inches ground clearance for this engine then - speed-bumped roads are out of the question! Let's hope someone doesn't leave a brick lying in the street!
