Dumpy Dump. H&R Race Spring Installation.

Mileage 143,300

So I finally got around to installing a set of H&R Race Springs for my 1995 M3. I already had the billie sports left on from the previous owner so I figured I would pair them up with the race springs. I could not find them for cheaper than $240 shipped. I shopped around awhile too. The best deal I found was from the Tirerack at $246.05 shipped.

In addition to the springs I also ordered new upper and lower spring pads for the front and rear as well as the replacement self-locking and locking collar nuts for the front. This was the first job in the new garage, and I was a little hesitant due to the large amount of black widow spiders I had killed the weeks prior. I bought some crazy spider spray, and as long as I kept my eyes out I would be ok. Southern California garage work. Small and spider ridden. It doesn't get much better than that.

So first things first I checked out the bentley to see what it had to say about suspension installation. Of course it wanted me to remove the caliper, rotor, steering arm, tie rod etc...but I took a look and it appeared that I could just unbolt the strut assembly and support the hub without much of a problem.

There are three bolts connecting the steering arm to the strut. Three collar nuts up top holding the strut mount to the body and one nut attached to the end link of the sway bar, if you have one. I unbolted everything on the bottom with a little help from my air tools then slowly took the nuts off the top. I put a jack under the control arm and placed various devices in accordance with some addtional jacks stands at various points of rigidity to station the brake and hub assembly from moving and tearing a ball joint. A wire hanger may work as well.

I pulled the strut assembly out without much of a problem. I then turned my attention to my newly purchased $8 spring compressors from Harbor Freight.

I strapped those bad boys up to the spring and hit the top 22mm nut with my impact wrench. As you can see the dust boot got a little twisted, but that simply straightened out and didn't tear.

The spring actually didn't fully uncompress until I broke the spring perch free from the strut. This was after I already removed the compressors. It bounced a little, but it wasn't under much tension.

I decided to just reuse the 95 strut mounts with all their miles on them. New ones weren't cheap. About $90 a piece. I figured I would just replace them with Caster/Camber mounts kits when the time came so I had no problem reusing them.

I replaced the busted up spring pads.

Whoever installed the Bilstein sports didn't use the correct top spring pads. It looks like they just used all lower spring pads. The front left was torn and the others were blown out.

I wasn't exactly sure which direction the spring was supposed to go. It didn't really say in the H&R handout either. I assumed the dead coils, or coils bunched close together, would go at the top and the logo would be right side up. Let me know if I'm wrong, because I couldn't find any definite information. I just went with "logic."

UPDATE: Called H&R. They confirmed the dead coils go at the top and the logos go right side up.

Comparison side by side stock vs. H&R Race

So I put the new pads in and dropped the spring in. I assembled the strut mount back on top with the assortment of washers and then torqued it down using a new self-locking nut. I was able to torque the nut down to 32ftlbs. I then hit it with the impact for a little extra snug.

I used my special 22mm socket that I have repurposed into a, "strut tool/castle socket." It looks nasty but does the job. It was first, "created," way back so I could hold the top nut of struts while accessing the internal hex, but then it turned into a castle socket for a clutch replacement on a 1974 cb750. It still works!

Assembled and ready to go back in.

Without disturbing the brake/hub assembly contraption I put the strut assembly back into it's place. I held it in by threading the new collar nuts up top and then tightened down the rest of the bolts.

The other side went pretty much the same way only faster.

Unfortunately I suffered from lowered car-double jack syndrome when trying to put the car back down after the fronts were installed. Usually I put the low profile jack in the front and jack up the middle of the front subframe. I did this after completing the spring installation and basically trapped my jack under the car. There was no room to pump the jack back up so I resorted to the factory jack! Which to my surprise is probably the best factory jack I have ever seen out of any car I've owned.

E36 M3 Factory jack FTW!

I backed the car in for the rears and also decided to bypass the Bentley's suggestion of rear spring removal. It consisted of removing the axle from the diff and lowering the rear trailing arm etc, so I basically said not today. I jacked the car up and removed the lower strut bolt. I positioned a jack beneath the trailing arm but it only rebounded a little bit.

I didn't have enough men or much of my own man power to just push down on the hub assembly and pull the spring out so I went with the redneck solution. I got the spring compressors in there as much as I could and started clamping the spring down.

After awhile I was able to wedge the stock spring out of its pocket. I'm kind of embarrassed to show that image, but that's how I did it. Not sure if that's ghetto or standard, but it worked.

I replaced the upper and lower spring pads with the OEM replacement pieces. The race spring went in without much convincing. I used a long wrench to pry down the suspension and push the spring into place. After that I torqued the bolt on the rear strut down and put the wheel back on. The rears didn't take much time at all.

Left rear installed.

Right rear installed.

Loaded gun rolling around the garage.

Another OEM BMW part that I've never used but decided to bust out purely out of being exhausted and fed up with wheel bolts instead of studs is the thing that comes in the tool kit on the boot lid. It's job is to actually go into a wheel bolt thread to help align the wheel.

Another shot of the "tool"

Overall the job went down about as expected. Would've been a bigger pain in the ass without air tools. Also might not have been possible without the spring compressors. And as far as the first run in the garage goes...not bad! About the same space as the last place but totally enclosed so I was covered from the rain this weekend. I was pleasantly surprised that it worked out as well as it did. I'll post some pics of just the garage in a couple weeks.

As far as ride quality and performance goes...well it was too wet to get on some corners. It's definitely more stiff, but the billie sports account for about 75% of that. I'm saying that it was already stiff, now it's just paired with the correct springs. We'll have to see how it goes on the track! I'm excited to see what it can do, stay tuned.