E21: Seat Fitment Guide:

Swapping seats round in a BMW E21 3-series is a nightmare, thanks to the floor-mounts being two different heights. To fit level-based seats from another car requires chopping out the welded floor-mounts and once this is done there is no going back.

1. Check if your floor-mounts have been chopped:

Check the outer floor-mounts on either side, spot-welded in place just inside the door-sill. They should look the one in the left photo below.

If they don't, and they look more like the right photo [with or without the wood], then you have chopped mounts and seats not originally from an E21. You also won't be going back to E21 seats very easily, so to preserve the style and make the ride a lot better, throw in seats from a newer BMW.

2.1 Fitting stock BMW seats from E30, E36 etc. :

This makes sense. E21 seats are sprung and uncomfortable and were dropped in almost every succeeding model. Other BMW seats are easier to come by and cheaper. E30 seats preserve the look almost identically and are far superior in construct. They also fit the inner seat mounts on the E21, the ones against the trans.-tunnel, so only the only outer ones need adapting. I am sure this is the case with seats from other 80s BMWs, possibly the E36 and E46 as I've seen it done, but need confirmation.
Modifying the outer floor-mounts, the ones against the door sills, is impossible as they just sit that much higher than the inner ones, the E21 of course having a crazy odd-height sub-frame design, so they need cutting out. Putting in new ones is pretty straight forward though, you can fabricate them with steel or alloy C-channel, wooden blocks, improvised stilts - these are all popular methods. Tilt-forward seats don't tend to be very strong anyway, so the new mounts don't have to be rock solid as long as they're bolted or welded securely to the floor-pan. Mine used the stock inner floor-mounts and a wooden block on the outer side to get the height - this presented no problem to the UK MOT (roadworthiness-test).

Check out my guide here: http://e21dub.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/e30-sports-seats-fitted.html

Or check out HSVTurbo's guide HERE [where I got my idea] in THIS THREAD on bimmerforums.

2.2 Fitting rigid Racing bucket-seats:

If you're building a track car then it's obviously best to keep things as stiff and secure as possible. The neatest and most weight-saving method is to cut some steel cross-beams to fit and weld them across the floor-pan, from the trans.-tunnel to the door-sill. This could be done with or without removing the outer floor-mount, but you will probably have to do this to get the seat low enough. Two cross-beams under each seat would probably be best, but it is most often done with just reasonably thick one.

More info. HERE on bimmerforums.

2.3 Fitting non-BMW stock seats (VW, Ford Recaro etc.) :

To get the right height and a central-position with stock seats from non-BMWs there is a lot of modification to the mounts - these seats will always have the bolt-holes in the wrong place. The tidiest way would probably be to weld in rigid cross-beams like in the above guide [2.2], otherwise you will need to fabricate custom mounts. [I used a combination of wood-block and steel cross-beam to fit Ford RS Recaros to mine in THIS POST].

Check out my guide here: http://e21dub.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/recaro-seat-base-adapter-finally-solved.html

3. Re-fitting stock E21 seats:

I have never seen anyone online do this. If you have level floor-mounts then I see no reason to switch back to E21 seats. All but the Recaros are uncomfortable, sprung nightmares. They give a truly bouncy and uncertain ride - only the most restoration mad would want it. The Recaros are super-rare and overpriced to fit the E21s mounts. E30 Recaros are a fraction of the price, have level mounts and are better anyway. If you are so desperate to restore your E21 dutifully, then I would consider it having cut floor-mounts a deal-breaker and to find one with stock seats, because the car will never be the same again.

There are 3 ways I see to achieve refitting stock seats:

1. Build custom outer mounts using a combination of the methods above, building them back up to the original and rather tall height for the stock seat-frames. [].

2. Locate a pair of original outer floor-mounts that have been cut out of another E21 and refit them to yours. These would first need to have been cut out carefully from the donor car and preserved by someone. Whether they would advertise them for sale is another matter, but asking on the forums can't hurt. Otherwise, you'll need to find someone with a scrap / breaking E21 and ask to neatly cut out its floor-mounts for a few quid. Either way, obtaining a useable pair is going to be tough.
Once you do though, they would just need to be measured up to where yours were cut off and welded into place. How neat a job you do will determine whether they fit or if it's unnoticeable.

3. Fabricate new outer mounts from the ground up out of steel and weld those in. I will endeavour to make a note of the dimensions of my cut one before passing it on and do a quick CAD design to fab-up a simple one.

**Also, I still have the passenger-side (N/S, Euro/US Driver-side) floor-mount [above], so if anyone wants it to try and weld back in message me! [Sadly, I cut the driver-side one out more severely and this is probably going to be the case if yours are chopped as it gives the wood or whatever more to grab on to.]

E21: Front indicators - a common problem?

Is your front corner-indicator not working, but the bulb and fuse are fine?

Mine wasn't and it turned out to be the metal live-clip that sits against the bottom of the bulb. Not the best of designs, connection is lost to the bulb if the clip is bent back slightly, causing the indicator to fail intermittently [denoted by faster clicking of the turning-signal]. The clip having a little corrosion or crud on it is also enough to stop the bulb getting a signal.

A quick clean up with emery-cloth and a slight bend forwards so it sits tight on the bulb was enough to get mine working solidly again. This could be a common problem, especially in the UK and Europe where grime gets pushed everywhere in an E21, so if your fuse and bulb appear fine, but the indicator won't work, you can bet it's the live-clip.

PROCESS:

1. Dis-connect the corner indicator wiring by sliding apart the plastic-clip located behind the headlamp under the bonnet and push it through the hole to the outside of the wing.

2. Remove the two crosshead screws holding the corner-indicator lens and lift the lens off.

3. Remove the two crosshead screws holding the indicator-housing to the wing. The housing should now slide forwards and clear the wing.

4. Use nose-pliers to remove the metal live-clip from where it sits in the plastic-housing.

5. Bend the prong [denoted by the arrow] in towards the other prong, bringing the flat-edge down.

6. Clean up the face of the prong and the metal-contact on the bulb with emery-cloth.

7. Replace the live-clip to the plastic-housing and reverse Steps 1-3 to re-fit.

E21 316: Taller springs for MOT.

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?!

E21/E30: Crude Rear Seat Repair.

When the seats arrived the rear one had a noticeably big tear on the top of the back-rest. By the time I'd finished cleaning them however, there were now 3 tears along the same strip. I was being super-careful with the scrubbing brush, but after 25 years under the back-window the glue is coming away and the strands of twill fabric separate very easily indeed. An attempt to repair one of the splits only made it worse as the material is stretched by the glue and can't wait to rip.

I considered throwing the stock beige seats back in, but then had a moment of er, inspiration, and found a strip of spare material wedged into the frame behind. I cut it into patches and stuck them down with fabric spray-adhesive, £7.99 but it's strong stuff.

It's not the prettiest of repairs, despite matching the lines up, but looks better than threadbare, won't get any worse now and the interior of the car looks a lot fresher with them in I must say. If they're going to stay though, a permanent cover-up will be needed - probably in the form of a parcel-shelf re-trim. The beige carpet could do with a refresh, so I may extend the fabric past the shelf and have it cascade over the back-rest slightly. We will see.

E21 316: More negative-camber on the front? Adjustable Top Mounts.

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.

E21 Retrofit Angel Eyes! [Single headlight models 315, 316, 318]

I fitted CCFL [cold-cathode fluorescent tube] angel-eye rings to my E39 5-series a while back and it was pretty straight-forward, so I thought I'd have a go at a real retrofit and stick some in the E21... because all Beemers should have angel-eyes right? I know it's not a stance thing, but it is a style thing nonetheless and you don't see many E21s with angel-eyes. Twin headlight models share lamps with the E30, so the aftermarket world is your oyster, but there are no kits available for the single headlight E21 so I bought the bits separately. I bought two 145mm CCFL-rings and inverter-ballasts from car-mod-shop-ltd on eBay, which worked out about the same price as a kit @ £10 for each ring and £5 for each ballast. 

The difference of course between retro and modern cars is the headlights nowadays are usually multiple lamps fitted into a cluster, which can be easily popped open and clipped back together, making it easy to fit the CCFL-rings inside them. Classic cars, say pre 1990, tend to have separate single lamps that have fully sealed lenses and cracking these babies open without busting the glass is what gave me the most trouble on this job, so bear this is mind before undertaking it yourself and be careful, it's not something I would want to do again anytime soon! 

1. Headlight Stripping:

Exploded headlight diagram on RealOEM.com to reference parts and construct: [http://www.realoem.com/bmw/showparts.do?model=1712&mospid=47166&btnr=63_0023&hg=63&fg=05]

1a. Remove the front grilles and headlights - see this guide if you need help doing that - [http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3344522564318790310#editor/target=post;postID=2422546919882957928]

1b. Free the spring-clip arms from the wiring-connector and rotate them back, then pull off the wiring-connector / covering-cap and remove the bulb / sidelight-bulb + holder.

1c. Remove the tensioning spring from the headlight chassis.

1d. Use a flat screwdriver to carefully pop the legs of the adjusting-screws out of their collars on the front of the headlight chassis.

1e. Carefully tilt the rear chassis away from the lens against the plastic mounting-clip, being careful not to snap it, until the chassis is clear of the spring-clip/lens and can be rotated a quarter-turn and removed from its mount.

1f. If the headlight has one, gently prize off the thin metal cowl from around the rim of the lens. [One of mine had it, one didn't.]

2. Opening the Lens:

2a. Leave the glass lens in a very low-heat oven for 10-15 minutes to soften the sealant between the glass and reflector.

2b. Score away as much of the sealant from around the rim of the glass as possible using a square-cut razor-blade and pick it out using a small flat screwdriver.

2c. Gently push a small flat screwdriver into the gap between the glass and the metal rim. Gently rotate the screwdriver to carefully prize the metal rim away from the glass and completely crack the seal, repeating around the entire circumference of the lens.

**Make sure you take time to pick away as much sealant as possible and can see or hear it crack away from the edge when prizing with the screwdriver before trying to lift the lens - it won't take much to crack the glass!**

2d. Place the end of the screwdriver beneath the edge of the glass and gently prize it up out of the metal lens. This will likely need doing in a few different spots before the glass becomes free enough to lift out of the lens.

3. Angel-Eye Fitting:

3a. Clean the lens and inside surface of the glass.

3b. Locate a suitable position for the CCFL angel-eye ring just inside the bowl of the lens. The larger 145mm rings I'm using have a flat section along the top that meets the bonnet shut-line on E46 etc. and I thought it would make too big a gap in my round lenses, so I mounted mine with the flat spot offset 45  degrees inwards on either side, giving it a sort of badboy-bonnet look, or that's the idea anyway.

3c. Push the socket and wires from the CCFL ring trough the sidelight hole in the lens [the socket may need one of the lugs cutting off the side to fit through], locate a suitable position for the two wires in the lens with the shortest path from the ring and attach them along the flat plastic side of the ring and to each other using clear-tape.

3d. Attach the CCFL angel-eye ring just inside the bowl of the lens using clear-sealant or the sticking-pads supplied with most CCFL-rings.

4. Resealing and Fitting:

4a. Apply clear-sealant [I just used multi-purpose silicone stuff] around the metal rim of the lens and replace the glass. If you haven't marked the position of the glass, the two hooks that fasten the spring-clip down is the top of the lens.

4b. Gently prize the edge of the metal rim back toward the glass and run another bead of sealant around the outside of the rim and leave it to set.

4c. Replace the headlight bulb and holder.

4d. Drill a hole of about 8-9mm in the covering cap, just to the right of the curved contact from the original sidelight. Pop the socket and wires from the CCFL-ring through the hole and replace the covering-cap.

4e. Use a bit more sealant on the hole where the CCFL-ring wires come through the cap.

4f. Replace the metal cowl [if it has one] and prize it back tight around the edge of the glass and lens.

4g. Reassemble the remaining headlight chassis by first inserting the plastic-lug and rotating the chassis back into place. Then drop it flat enough against the lens to easily get the spring back into place and stretch the chassis back until you can pop the ends of the adjusting-screws back into their collars.

4h. Refit the headlights and grilles to the car.

5. Wiring Up:

5a. Find a suitable place to mount the CCFL-ballast where there is plenty of room for the wires to reach and affix it with the provided sticking-pads. [If you're only running a single headlight it's worth heavily insulating the unused CCFL socket and tape it out of the way - they carry a high current and can short out very easily, I've burnt out a few inverters before just by them contacting the body for a second or two!]

5b. Chop the lower of the 4 wires on the headlight wiring-connector. This is the one that sticks out further away from the other 3 terminals on the connector and should be Gy/Wt for O/S and Yl/Bk for N/S on European single-headlight model E21s.

5c. Connect the cut wire to the terminal on the CCFL-ballast's red wire using solder or crimp-connectors and insulate with heat-shrink ideally, or tape.

5d. Connect the black wire from the CCFL-ballast to the headlight earth-wire - the brown wire on both sides. You could do this by soldering or with a multi-crimp connector, but I found the easiest way was to bend the metal terminal of the black wire 90 degrees and slide it into the brown wire socket on the headlight connector. The connector then holds the wire tight when it's pushed into place. A bit slapdash, but it does the trick!

5e. Plug the wiring connector back into the headlight and connect up the CCFL-ring to the inverter-ballast.

Enjoy your new angle eyes!

E21 316: Spring Chop Chronicles 4 - Back Down!

E21 316: Spring Chop Chronicles 3 - Double Drop!

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!

E21 316: Spring Chop Chronicles 2 - Cutting E21 Springs Explained

Cutting car springs at home - a good idea? Well, no. We've all heard the story about that guy who chopped the springs on his Mum's Nova SR and ended up on his roof. Most modern springs are tapered at either end to hold them into the spring-pan and this means that cutting them changes the design and they won't fit. If they do they won't work properly holding up the weight of the car. Your average knowledgable bloke will say "Ah, yes, but they will work if you cut them right!". This is not the case. You can never cut tapered springs to work right, period.

If you own an E21, or one of most other classic cars, then you will likely have the old style 'pigtail' springs that do not taper at either end. They're just a coiled spring, which end in a point and sit in a groove in the spring-pan top and bottom [2 in the pic below]. These CAN be cut shorter and still work - as long as they are cut right.

Why do it?

You want to go lower with your car, but a spring-kit isn't available to go as low as you want. You don't want to fork out money for lowered springs. 

Front

Rear

E21 316: The Spring Chop Chronicles: 1

Q: Is it possible to DIY-cut stiffened SPAX already lowered springs, by hand and without removing the shock from the car and without messing it all up?

A: Yes!


I've wanted to slam the front down so it matches or is lower than the rear since day one and with my recent splurge on the rear axle I thought it was about time. I had my heart set on a set of shortened SPAX strut-inserts, £200, assuming they were what was keeping the front end up, but it turns out I may have -40mm springs, not -60 as I thought, so the best bet is shorter coils. I would never in my wildest dreams have considered cutting the springs shorter and getting away with it, but it turns out the front springs on E21s are the 'pigtail' kind so can be cut and there are a lot of E21 guys doing this successfully on the forums, so considering a set of -60mm SPAX are £123, I thought I'd give it my best shot.

This page on E21Build.com on chopping stock springs was the most helpful with the process -  http://www.e21build.com/2012/12/cut-springs-and-other-things.html - but I thought I'd try and do a slightly more in depth guide, below.

First remove the top-nut using a 19mm deep-socket and yank the strut down a bit in the wheel-arch. This is so there is no tension left on the spring. Although the car's weight is taken off the spring by the jack it is still under a bit of tension, enough to cause harm, until the top-nut is undone.

Mark a line on whichever coil you are cutting directly above the natural bottom-end of the spring [where it fits to the notch in the baseplate]. This is the ONLY position at which the spring coils can be cut as the top-end of the spring fits into another notch in the top-mount and it won't line up if the spring is rotated.

I went with cutting one coil off for now to see how things go. *NB: The cable-ties I've used in the pic are NOT for compressing the spring. The spring was already under no tension, I was holding it up to cut.

Once the spring is cut the gap is too small to remove it from around the strut-body, so the only way to do so is to chop the off-cut in a second place and remove it in two pieces. Lowered-springs are made of some seriously tough sprung-steel and making one cut, let alone two, is hard work, particularly if you're only using hand tools as I was. Due to limited space I'd recommend the smallest profile whizzer-disc you can find, otherwise you'll wind up using a hacksaw blade by itself, as I did.

Seat the new bottom-end of the spring into the baseplate notch, make sure the top-end is still in the right place in it's notch and gently jack the strut back up through the hole in the top-mount. The tricky part is getting the strut-insert in the right position to get through the top-plate/mount enough to get the top-nut in place, without shifting the spring from either notch. I found the best way was to press the top-plate and washer down over the insert first, then guide it up through the top-mount and slide my hands out as the strut was jacked up by a pal. Once the threaded part of the insert can be reached by the nut from above the top-mount, even just a couple of turns, tightening the nut should be enough to raise the strut into the mount. Again, make sure the spring is seated correctly, as are the rubber boots - these can be seriously annoying to hold in place!

The spring position might look a bit jenky while the car is still raised, but fear not, as long as the spring is seated flush, with the first coil up from the cut end sitting snugly inside the rim of the baseplate, not proud of the edge, then all should be well and they'll settle nicely with the weight of the car on them. 

How much lower?

I am led to believe by the previous owner that my front SPAX SSX springs are -40mm [though they may be -60mm after all]. After cutting just the bottom coil out the car has dropped another 3/8 of an inch [~15mm]. If i'm right and they are the 40mm springs, I'm currently at about -55mm. If, fingers crossed, cutting a second coil will give me another 15-20mm, I'll be running at a 70-75mm drop, which is exactly what I want, given that the £700 GAZ coil-over setup, boasting the biggest off-the-shelf drop of all, only goes down to -65mm. On the other hand if I do end up having started with the 60mm springs, then I'm already at -75mm still with nearly two fingers of tyre to arch clearance and going any lower will probably wreck the springs - oh well, at least the full set of 4 SPAX SSX is only £123, [http://www.larkspeed.com/index.pl?p=60S003043&a=i]. 

An added worry is the strut-inserts bottoming out from the spring only having 4.5 coils of resistance rather than 6.5, but that's still a little over two-thirds of stock and my inserts are stiffened SPAX PSX anyway, so I don't see why they won't hold up in theory with the damper set quite stiff. There doesn't seem to be any bottoming out with one coil cut, but if they start doing it with two I guess I'll have to fork out for the shortened strut-inserts after all [http://www.larkspeed.com/index.pl?a=i&p=SPX112TAS155I&part=BMW-E21-3-Series-incl-M-Technik-45mm-strut-insert-Spax-Adjustable-Shock-Absorber-Insert-Shortened]. As for ground clearance, the metal bar that runs under the sump is currently just under 4 inches from the floor. It wasn't much more than that before, granted, but could cutting out one more coil be the tipping-point in losing all everyday drivability? We will find out tomorrow!