Rear Suspension Overhaul Part I: Trailing Arms, Wheel Bearings and Surviving a 20 Ton Shop Press.

The rear overhaul was a tall order. I started in early 2013 and finally finished in April 2014. There were many contributing life factors, but overall I tracked most of my hours. Total time spent in the garage on the car doing odds and ends was well over 60 hours. So it was about 2 weeks of work straight. If you actually had that time and all the correct parts.

Looking at it in those terms makes it seem like a much smaller job than it actually was. Having gone through it all I would probably do things a little differently in the future. I'll go over that.

Step 1: What's the service consist of?

Here's what I changed just on the rear suspension.

New trailing arm bushing (RTAB) (e46 split design Meyle HD/TCK Limiters)
New subframe bushings (Bimmerworld solid aluminum)
New upper and lower rear control arm ball joints (OE BMW/Lemfoerder)
New rear adjustable lower camber arms. (Turner Race)
New wheel bearings, snap ring, nut (FAG)
New differential bushings (Turner solid aluminum/delrin front)
New sway bar bushings (Lemfoerder)
New wheel bearing and associated hardware (FAG)
New boots/grease for axles R&R (GKN LOEBRO)

Weld reinforcements for the RTAB pocket (AKG)
Weld reinforcements for the rear sway bar attachment (TMS)

Powdercoat all parts

Step 2: Start unboltin' shit

Obviously to get at everything you got to drop the exhaust. After that was down I got a better look at what we're dealing with.

Axle, subframe and diff with 20 years of dirt on it.

Tired sway bar bushing.

RTAB that probably has never been changed.

Dirt.

Cracked front differential bushing.

We'll see more as the parts come off. First order of business is to remove the axles. I'm not going to pretend like these are the simplest things to take off. The T-12 or T-14 (it's probably T-13 if that exists) star nut head is a pain in the ass. They're really easy to strip. I didn't use air tools at first for this very reason, but I found that a slow crank was actually worse than an impact. After ruining two bolts I impacted the rest off with no problem. Don't be afraid of air tools here. Also helps with immobilizing the drive-train.

I had to use one of those craftsman extractor style sockets you see here because I was super smart about rounding off the head on a few bolts. The bolts are $10 each from BMW by the way.

Once the axles are free you can give them a whack with a big hammer and they should come free.

From here I took to removing the trailing arm out of the bushing pocket. At this point you could remove the drive shaft output flange and 4 sub-frame bolts and drop the entire rear suspension. I decided to take out each trailing arm to make the whole mess less heavy.

And this is what a blown RTAB looks like. It is not supposed to be broken free from it's bushing. Looks like the original "flanged" design that most likely came on the car. After having owned an m3 now for the better part of 4 years I tell anyone who just bought one to replace these right away. If you didn't buy from an enthusiast they're most likely toast and can be a major factor in poor handling.

Here I am excitedly showing how much play actually exists in these now defunct bushings.

With the rear trailing arms removed I set out to pull the hubs apart. This is no easy task since there is a huge dust shield in the way making any press work a bitch. I found a a video where a guy put a bearing separator behind the hub and uses the lugs to push the hub out from the trailing arm.

You can do this on the car as well if you're just doing wheel bearings. Problem was the separator wasn't thick enough or the bolts weren't long enough. I had to build up an area to press against to pull the hub off.

Now this method puts a lot of force on the threads of the hub and can strip your hub. If you don't have a press and want to pull the bearings with the trailing arm on the car this is really your best best. If you equally use 5 studs to remove the hub it will be less stress on your threads.

There is no way to NOT destroy the bearing. Removing the hub pulls the bearing apart.

And then you're left with this. The inner bearing race jammed up against the hub. Again without a press this is a bitch to get off. My buddy was wondering how to get these off without a press so I used the same method again. Apply the bearing separator and then turn the bolts through pushing the hub off the race.

Needless to say this took forever and looks pretty ghetto but it works. For the other side I used the same principles of force but just used a press instead. Life was much better and about 95% faster on the other side.

Alternatively shown here with a press, gripping the race tightly and propping it up on some steel blocks I was able to push the other side out with little swearing.

Before I got to that point I had to press the hub out from the trailing arm. I basically have the setup above this picture underneath the dust shield. Using a press is a combination of creativity, the hardware store aisle and experience. I understand now why shops charge what they do to press things. You need ALOT of special sized sleeves and press fittings. I would've spent more on those things alone vs just having a shop press them if I didn't have access to a bunch of scrap in the fab shop at work.

 Since the RTAB have those flanges on them, I had to grind them away to get a surface to press against.

The two control arm bushings came out easy enough with a square tall pipe beneath them. This is a 20 ton press from harbor freight by the way. Honestly, it works great. The wheel bearing as well as the bushings for the sub-frame and control arms also still had to be pressed out and I was just getting started. This is all I'm going to talk about with the press if you have any questions leave them in the comments below!

E36 M3 Front Suspension Overhaul Part I: Front Lower Control Arm Ball Joint and Bushing Replacement

So after the last track event, which was years ago it feels like, I was experiencing a scary 'knock' noise in the front suspension upon heavy braking. It felt like it was in the steering or at the very least something part of the front suspension.

I got the car home and have been doing a major overhaul and the front suspension replacing anything and everything down there. I'll do a 3 or 4 part installment of everything I went over. First up is the front control arms.

95 M3 Control Arm

With 150k miles on the chassis I was positive the front control arm ball joints and bushings were shot. I would also assume they are the factory units having bought the car stock from a non-enthusiast. The easiest way to replace these is just order new control arms with the ball joints alrady pressed in. Unfortunately these are about $200 each for Lemfoerder brand control arms. The Meyles are slightly cheaper, but I would only go with the Lemfoerder personally.

I then discovered that you can press out the existing bushings and use Lemfoerder ball joints from the e30 control arms. The topic is covered in this thread here. So for about $25-$30 a ball joint you can replace all 4 for about $120 instead of $400. Also I decided to change my tie rods and sway bar links since they were shot as well.

Removing the control arms is no easy task. First to get more room I removed the sway bar.

Then remove the nuts on the top of the subframe and the other one on the spindle. Keep the lolipop with the control arm bushing attached to the car for now unlike the picture below.

After that I used an arsenal of tools to remove the control arms.

The control arm ball joints have a tappered fit which creates a mechanical weld. You need a pickle fork to break this weld. My ball joints were so stuck I used a torch to heat them up, an impact air hammer with pickle fork adjustment and a 4lb hammer just to get the force I needed to break them up. In the end that wouldn't even work and I ended up using this guy.

All these tools were purchased from harbor freight and, honestly, did the job. When the welds break it will go off like a gunshot. There is no other real DIY for this, it's just removing bolts and brute force. The ball joints themselves had some play in them but they were snug in their homes. I tore the boots upon removing them but the control arm ball joints and tie rods themselves did not look responsible for the knock noise I was experiencing on the track.

Once the arms were both out I took them to my buddy Justin Pawlak's shop Hotline in Gardena. Justin and I grew up in the same town and when he's not busy winning Formula D races I ask him if I can borrow his tools. ;) I didn't bring my camera so I don't really have any pictures of the process. If you look at that thread above you can see you'll need a 20 ton press at the least. That is what I used. Here are the old ball joints pressed out.

Justin, rushing at the time building badass drift cars, pressed in the first set showing me how to work a press and accidentally tore one of the boots. I pressed in the other arm and replaced the torn boot. I couldn't order just the boot so I bought a $11 Meyle ball joint and salvaged the boot from that.

I also decided to use Delrin front control arm bushings. The set I used is the TC Kline/Turner Brand. Since they are offset of the 1995 M3 only they need a set screw so that they won't move. A simple tap and they were set.

So that's about it for the control arms. Up next is subframe reinforcement followed by steering rack swap with new tie rods.

E28 Tune Up! Sea Foam, Plugs, Plug Wires, Fan Clutch, Dog Bones, Valve Adjustment, Oil Change

Date: 07/14/11-07/25/11
Mileage: 297,651

So it was time to do some basic, "I just bought this car," maintenance. There were a couple things going on. First things first there was basically no power. That might be because it's an ETA, but a Seafoam was definitely in order.

This picture shows how I connected it. I basically followed the directions on the back with a couple recipe changers from Youtube videos and things I read on the forum. You want to ingest the seafoam slowly. I dunked the hose in there and it stalled out the car right away. With a little hose like that going to an even smaller vacuum nipple, it's hard to ingest too much anyway.

So I sipped down about half a bottle over the period of about 3 minutes or so. Right before I decided that was enough I let the motor take a big gulp so it would pile up in the combustion chamber. I then turned the car off and let it sit for 30 minutes. I came back and started revving the shit out of it.

Of course you're going to get a bunch of white smoke. I poured the other half in the gas tank and put 6oz  in the engine. When adding to the crankcase it says to use 1.5oz/Liter of engine oil capacity. Ok, old ass engine, time for a tune-up.

Now I guess the idea is to drive the car super hard to burn off all the old carbon. I'm not sure how much of improvement I felt, but it's about the least you can do to an old tired motor. After you're happy with your italian tune-up I would change the plugs as it most likely ruined whatever ones were in there.

So next up were plug and plug wires. I got a good deal on the OE plug wires from BMA Parts. They're generally $137 for the m20. I got them for $100 or something like that. I don't know what's up with them but they are cheaper than Pelican or RM for some thing.

The plugs were the stock Bosch W8LCR, which is pre-gapped and stock for the m20 325i and super ETA. The plug wires were original with the blue #6 wire. Here's a pic of the old spark plugs.

I guess it was time to change them. I drove the car about another 100 miles with the seamfoam in the crank case before I decided to change the oil and do a valve adjustment. While I was doing the valve adjustment I decided to change out the fan clutch. The coolant temperature was raising when I was at a stop and going back down once I was moving again. I decided the fan clutch probably needed to be replaced. I was able to stop the old one with my hand so that was good enough for me.

Upon getting a 32mm bike wrench on the counter threaded nut, I noticed the nut just started turning without much effort at all. Quite the opposite from most of the fan clutches I've removed. I was able to spin the fan and fan clutch off without any effort at all. I then realized the fan clutch wasn't bad at all! It was just not screwed on tight. Doh, oh well I replaced it anyway.

I was trying to find out what the difference is between the Sachs and the Behr fan clutch, but basically you should be able to run either one. I have a 9 blade fan and there are holes for either clutch. Some say the Sachs locks up early, but no one in the e30 scene seemed to notice one way or another about what fan clutch you should run. I just kept the 89-91 Behr that is meant for the 11 blade fan and it worked fine on my 9 blade fan.

With the fan out of the way I was able to get a socket on the crank bolt to turn the motor for the valve adjustment. The valve adjustment is described in the Bentley. You basically take the valve cover off and adjust the valves with a feeler gauge. I did this with the motor cold which calls for a tolerance of 0.010" or 0.254mm between the eccentric and the top of the valve. I have a set of feeler gauges from Sears. Here is the gauge for 0.010".

So with the valve cover off grab a 10mm wrench and loosen the eccentric nut. Get a 2mm allen key or something similar to rock the eccentric back and forth. Put the gauge under the valve you're adjusting and snug it up moderately and tighten down the nut. Pull out the feeler gauge and you should still be able to slide it back in. If you can't it's too tight. I make sure it's snug up in there. The odd thing is that all of them were too tight. So I basically made my sewing machine louder than it already was.

Turn the motor over to relive the next rocker from the cam lobe and continue through each one until your done. Being a Super ETA I have an 885 head. The PO said he had the head replaced at some point and I was crossing my fingers it was a 325i head. But upon inspection there were no dual valve springs. 7 bearing cam but I guess the super ETA cams were 7 bearing special cams. People say there were 4 bearing super ETA cams but honestly those are probably just eta cams.

Of course whenever removing the valve cover gasket remember to order one of those breather hose as they tend to crack.

So I laid down a new valve cover gasket and the 4 little rubber stoppers on each end that keep the rocker shaft hole closed and tightened everything back up. The motor seemed to run a little better, but just louder. I brought it back and changed the oil.

I just ordered whatever 20w50 oil RMEuropean had on tap. After reading a little about old motors and new oils it looks like solid rocker motors like ZDDP and newer oils have less of that. Well next time I guess I'll use something like Valvoline VR1 20w50 "racing" oil. It is conventional and has high levels of ZDDP. It can be had for about $6/Qt from Amazon. I don't really care to run synthetic in an old ass m20, but anything to keep the racquet down is fine by me.

I drove the car after each step. Seafoam - not much change. New plugs and wires - not much change. Valve adjustment - not much change. Oil Change - BIG difference.

So lesson for the day is change your oil. I don't know when the last time was that the PO had changed the oil, but I had only put on about 700 miles since I originally bought it a month ago. And it's an old ass m20 so I'm sure no NEW damage was done.

The last thing I did to the e28 was address the loud BANG noise that occurred when putting the car in reverse and accelerating. I took a look at the drop arm, dog bone or pitman bushings and they were shot.

They looked like this on both sides. Basically 200k+ miles of abuse. I ordered the Lemfoerder brand because I figured I would pay a little more up front and never have to replace them again. It was only $50 more than the Meyles and came with new bolts!

I removed the rear wheel to get access to the nut on the top part of the carrier frame. To remove the bolts I used air tools. Would've been a bitch otherwise. Here is the old next to the new.

I'd say those were about 100k miles over their wear limit. I jacked up the rear brake assembly to make installation of the new dog bone a little easier. Once in place I wasn't able to torque the bolt and hold the nut on the long bolt so I torqued it in the air. For the bottom one I tightened it and then let the car back down, loaded it up with a couple passengers and torqued that down with the pre-load specification in the Bentley. I tried that method at first with the other bolt but there was no way to immobilize the bolt to torque it properly.

Here it is all replaced. You can see my awesome recently replaced OE Bosal muffler! Thanks PO. While I was down there I decided to see what kind of diff I had. I turned both the wheels and they rotated in the same direction. Score! Sure enough I have the 3.46 LSD that some of the 1988 528e Super ETA came with as an option. The higher ratio is due to the fact that's it's an auto. A sought after ratio for the e30 swap guys and good all arounder for the e28.

So that about does it for a little while. Everything is good for the road as far as I'm concerned. I'm not trying to drop huge bucks on this car, just something to get me around town while the "track car" needs work.