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

More lowered E21 for inspiration...

E21 316: Arch Rolling - First Test.

ET Plus complete arch-rolling kit was about £100 on eBay and comes with a full set of spigot rings to fir anything.

Hard to see in the pic, but quite a bit of scrubbing on the tyre and a faint red line all the way around the sidewall from the sharp-edged lip, below.

Rolling-tool bolts on to the hub, winds out against the arch and you're away, rolling it back and forth, winding it out a little more each time. This was insanely easy compared to what I was expecting. 

I managed to roll the sharp lip up almost flush and gave the rim of the arch a slight flare in about 15 minutes flat. No more scrubbage for now, even if the look hasn't changed much.

It's best to use a heat-gun to warm the paint so it doesn't crack, but without one to hand I figured hot water would do the trick. A bit of loose paint still flaked off from under the arch, but it looks like I'm already beginning to get rusty bubbles under the rim of all four arches and they will probably have erupted by summer. The n/s arch also consists of a fair bit of primer, so it'll be interesting to see how neatly that rolls out and I'll ask my paint guy how much smoothing and spraying all the arches will be with my left over paint. 

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!

E21 316: Rear Wheel Spacers + Arch Rolling Kit!

With the engine now back in fine fettle [we hope!], I couldn't wait to get back on-project and spend a bit on stance, so I've started with these 20mm spacers for the rear wheels. I'm not sure if it's an illusion of the E21 body-shape, but the rear wheels always look a bit tapered in from the front ones, so these spacers should primarily even up the front/rear track or even bring the back wheels a bit further out than the front, as it should look. They'll also help make my rather skinny 7J wheels look a bit fatter and get the arch-clearance a bit tighter - and, of course, will make fitting fatter wheels [which is going to have to happen at some point isn't it] easier in the future.

In fear of the spacers pushing the wheel out too far and causing the outside of the tyre to contact the wheel arch, I also bought a wheel-arch rolling kit. It's about £100 to have a pair of arches rolled professionally and, as mine is a work-in-progress and I'm not 100% on the setup I'll be using, I decided £97 for my own kit will definitely work out cheaper if I need to keep on rolling them out as I go lower and wider...

French made spacers are nicely machined, but billet steel and pretty heavy.

Deemed too wide for extra-long wheel-bolts, these babies have two sets of holes and bolt on to the hub by themselves.

Rear wheels slightly proud of front ones as they should be, but a slight loss of negative-camber.

E21 316: Melber Wheel Painting!

Thought I'd spruce up the ratty Melber alloys this week to try and get away from the touring-car look and back to the general stance car vibe by painting the rims in cream. Or beige really, Peugeot Panama Beige to be precise - I spotted a Mk2 Golf with the full wheels painted in it and it looked like a nice antiquey dark cream. It looks decidedly lighter on mine though, perhaps I should have gone for Antelope Beige after all.

The dish I have left in the dark metallic-grey for now, but as one has the paint polished off something will have to be done, maybe a matt dark-grey or just grey-primer, we'll see.

E21 316: More manifold gaskets for M10...

Stuck the new and much better quality exhaust-manifold gaskets on today from Euro Car Parts. They're thicker than the eBay ones and have steel rings round the inner rim like a head-gasket, should make a better seal. It's got rid of the cracking noise from that dodgy one on cyl. 4 [this post] and the engine sounds sweeter than ever.

Surprisingly the manifold nuts all came off as they should this time and left all eight studs in the head... weird, but it certainly made fitting the gaskets a lot easier.