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      03-31-2012, 12:29 PM   #1
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Ground Control Camber Plates, Apex Arc 8 and Kumho Ecsta XS Install/Review

Many of us here on the forums use our BMWs for multiple types of driving. For us, our BMWs don’t just sit in the driveway/garage and go back and forth to the track, autox course or to shows. As much as that may be what we would ultimately like, we have to be sensible. So we subject our BMWs to the demands of daily use AND to the demands of those automotive events that we enjoy so much. For that reason, in order to ensure our cars are properly prepared for these varying driving conditions, we have to be extremely thoughtful and selective when choosing modifications.

Wheels and Tires

Mounting good tires and ensuring their contact patch with the pavement is maximized will provide enhanced grip with no dramatic impact on ride quality. I went with a square tire and wheel setup so that I could rotate them back in forth in order to extract all of the life from the tires as possible and get the neutral balance I was looking for. Front-end fitment was the challenge at this point so I went with the widest setup possible that I thought wouldn’t cause issues. Tire choice was limited as I needed a specific size for the setup to fit properly, but I am happy to say the Kumho Ecsta XS tires aren’t too bad for their price.

Before
Wheels: OEM 264s – 18x7.5 (F) / 18X8.5 (R)
Bridgestone Potenza RE050A RFT – 215/40/18 (F) / 245/35/18 (R)



After
Apex Arc 8 - 18x8.5 (F+R) +45 Offset
Kumho Ecsta XS – 245/35/18 (F+R)



The Apex’s fit with just enough clearance (see picture below) between the strut and the wheel. If the offset and wheel width were any different I may have required a spacer for clearance, but I got away with it by a hair. Keep in mind that no fender rolling/pulling was required here either.



Camber Plates

The next step was addressing the alignment. While our cars are fairly adjustable from the factory, I knew that dialing in more negative camber in the front would improve front end grip even more and playing with toe settings front and rear would allow me to tweak the cars willingness to rotate to my own personal preferences. In order to make the front end adjustable I purchased a set of Ground Control street camber plates which work for the E90 (2006-Up 3 Series) and E82/E88 (2008-Up 1 Series).



The GC street camber plates were designed keeping the street driver and track driver in mind while offering many of the benefits of a fully adjustable camber plates. Now I don’t work for Ground Control, but I can appreciate the thought that went into their design.

Here are a few of the things that I like about the design:
  • Utilizes a urethane bushing and axial load bearing for reduced harshness (waterproof and replaceable)
  • 26mm of camber adjustment
  • Cool slot designs allow for side to side caster correction – not adjustable
  • Components are anodized or zinc plated making them corrosion resistant
  • Camber plates available for stock or 2.5 inch springs

What does all of this mean? Essentially it means you can dial in your suspension just the way you want with some very thoughtful features for the dual-purpose driver. Here you get a great bearing design to reduce friction, but also ensure the ride is smooth and silent. Cabin noise increased slightly, but by no means is it offensive. Steering feedback was improved as the soft, stock strut tops were replaced with a much more firm piece of hardware. They are corrosion resistant so they won’t rust and corrode away horribly if you aren’t very caring to them. Although you still should because they still can, the key word is resistant here. I had that happen on an old car of mine and it was not fun. And proper perches allow for you to use the camber plates with the spring you are using, whether it be a coilover spring or stock spring.

Install/Alignment

Disassembling the factory suspension was easy. The only part of the install that required some work was the bearing. Take a look at the pictures below. We had to trim the bearing in order to make sure the nut grabbed the threads on the top of the strut. Minus that, the install went smoothly. Fortunately Jack, the shop foreman and lead fabricator, has the experience and skills necessary to do a job like this. Check out his Subaru 3.3RS NASA ST-2 race car here.

Jack does all of his alignments by hand and is very precise. He was able to get all of the negative camber I wanted and get my toe settings to my exact specs through adjusting the length of the tie rods. The rear end is pretty adjustable from the factory so he was able to get that dialed in nicely without any drama.

Here are my final specs:

Front
Toe: 1/16th toe out
Camber: -2.2 degrees
Caster: Factory spec

Rear
Toe: 1/8 toe in
Camber: -1.5 degrees

Results

Now the car behaves exactly the way I wanted it to! The car is very neutral and rotates nicely and predictably under throttle. Under sharp steering inputs the car bites down and dives in where beforehand it would just plow with understeer if you turned in to sharply and with a lot of speed. Overall grip is much higher. Steering feedback has been sharpened. The tire offset dramatically changed the balance characteristics of the car, the sticker compound increased overall grip significantly and the lower unsprung weight from the wheels and tires improved grip as the wheel and tire now move more easily with road imperfections. It may have even helped acceleration a little bit. All in all, I couldn’t be more pleased with the outcome resulting from these simple changes. Here are some pictures of the final results, a recent autocross I attended and a video of my “fun run” showing the newfound throttle on oversteer. Please excuse the stuff rolling around on my passenger foot area!





















-Josh
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      03-31-2012, 08:34 PM   #2
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Good review and pic. Just wondering why ground contol would have parts that need modified for proper installation.
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      04-01-2012, 10:08 AM   #3
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Quote:
Originally Posted by 1Fasst1 View Post
Good review and pic. Just wondering why ground contol would have parts that need modified for proper installation.
Thanks. Having owned and used Ground Control products in the past I was surprised myself. I am still glad I choose them over other competitive plates though because of all the above reasons. The actual trimming wasn't difficult.

-Josh
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      04-01-2012, 10:37 AM   #4
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Did you happened to cut the bolt right below the strut bar shorter?

When I installed mine that bolt appeared to be on the way so we just cut it down.

I think the plate was made to fit a 1 series without the strut bar and a 3 series. Got kinda pissed especially there's almost no room to stick a cutting tool there.

Also, with max camber in 245/40/18 rs3, stock suspension, I can only get -1.9 degree in front. Which rubbed a bit during hard cornering.
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      04-01-2012, 01:27 PM   #5
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Quote:
Originally Posted by uratomb View Post
Did you happened to cut the bolt right below the strut bar shorter?

When I installed mine that bolt appeared to be on the way so we just cut it down.

I think the plate was made to fit a 1 series without the strut bar and a 3 series. Got kinda pissed especially there's almost no room to stick a cutting tool there.

Also, with max camber in 245/40/18 rs3, stock suspension, I can only get -1.9 degree in front. Which rubbed a bit during hard cornering.
245/40-18? if that's right, it's probably rubbing because it's too tall.
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      04-02-2012, 12:23 AM   #6
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Interesting mine had plenty of bolt/nut space on the strut shaft (?):
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      04-02-2012, 06:20 AM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by EFI Logics View Post
Front
Camber: -2.2 degrees
Quote:
Originally Posted by uratomb View Post
stock suspension, I can only get -1.9 degree in front.
What is the maximum these camber plates are supposed to get?
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      04-02-2012, 12:53 PM   #8
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OP..

by chance do you have an electronic version of the install instructions for these..

I am expecting them tomorrow in the mail, and plan to install them in the next few days.. I didnt see anything on there site, so i thought they give you a link when you get them ????

I doubt the application would need for you to "cut" anything or turn down such a larg bushing...maybe the wrong bushings were packaged ??? alot of people have put theses in and im sure we would have seen some others with the same concern...
Thanks..

and gary, i heard 2.0 to 2.5 max neg camber. personally ill take anything over the whopping .7 neg that i have LOL ... I chose G/C as they are reported to be quieter...and this is my Daily Driver...

Thnaks again
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      04-02-2012, 02:09 PM   #9
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Quote:
Originally Posted by uratomb View Post
Did you happened to cut the bolt right below the strut bar shorter?

When I installed mine that bolt appeared to be on the way so we just cut it down.

I think the plate was made to fit a 1 series without the strut bar and a 3 series. Got kinda pissed especially there's almost no room to stick a cutting tool there.

Also, with max camber in 245/40/18 rs3, stock suspension, I can only get -1.9 degree in front. Which rubbed a bit during hard cornering.
We did not have to cut the bolt down at all to get it installed.

Quote:
Originally Posted by GaryS View Post
What is the maximum these camber plates are supposed to get?
We got -2.2 degrees out of mine and we may have been able to get a little more. For my purposes, I don't need any additional camber than that..

Quote:
Originally Posted by DriveHard View Post
OP..

by chance do you have an electronic version of the install instructions for these..

I am expecting them tomorrow in the mail, and plan to install them in the next few days.. I didnt see anything on there site, so i thought they give you a link when you get them ????

I doubt the application would need for you to "cut" anything or turn down such a larg bushing...maybe the wrong bushings were packaged ??? alot of people have put theses in and im sure we would have seen some others with the same concern...
Thanks..

and gary, i heard 2.0 to 2.5 max neg camber. personally ill take anything over the whopping .7 neg that i have LOL ... I chose G/C as they are reported to be quieter...and this is my Daily Driver...

Thnaks again
Sorry, DriveHard. The camber plates never came with instructions that I could share with you. If you are fairly handy with tools I think you can handle this task with a buddy. If you need any help though we would be happy to help you get these all setup and aligned for you.

It is very possible that they sent us the wrong bearing, but I never bothered to contact Ground Control as it wasn't a challenge for us to make it work.

In terms of noise, I think this is a great option if that's one of your concerns. Did I notice a difference in noise? Yes. But it really isn't bad and it's totally worth the resulting steering feedback improvement, front end grip and tire life extension I gained. I actually feel like I get more noise from the Kumho tires.

-Josh
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      04-03-2012, 12:18 AM   #10
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Quote:
Originally Posted by GaryS View Post
What is the maximum these camber plates are supposed to get?
I have 3 degrees negative camber easily, with the ground control plates, with stock wheels and 225/40/18 RS3's up front. I installed the M3 wishbones which allows upward of 4 degrees negative. I run them at 3 degrees though which I find perfect for the track.

Here is a link with some info on the GC Plates: http://www.1addicts.com/forums/showthread.php?t=618429

Last edited by MINI135i; 04-03-2012 at 12:26 AM..
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      04-03-2012, 05:12 AM   #11
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MINI135i View Post
I have 3 degrees negative camber easily, with the ground control plates, with stock wheels and 225/40/18 RS3's up front. I installed the M3 wishbones which allows upward of 4 degrees negative. I run them at 3 degrees though which I find perfect for the track.

Here is a link with some info on the GC Plates: http://www.1addicts.com/forums/showthread.php?t=618429
Thanks, I was hoping for 2.5 to 3 degrees negative.
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      04-03-2012, 06:59 AM   #12
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MINI135i View Post
I have 3 degrees negative camber easily, with the ground control plates, with stock wheels and 225/40/18 RS3's up front. I installed the M3 wishbones which allows upward of 4 degrees negative. I run them at 3 degrees though which I find perfect for the track.

Here is a link with some info on the GC Plates: http://www.1addicts.com/forums/showthread.php?t=618429
Nice setup, MINI135i. I am eager to try those RS3s out.

-Josh
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      04-03-2012, 11:50 AM   #13
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Quote:
Originally Posted by EFI Logics View Post
We did not have to cut the bolt down at all to get it installed.



We got -2.2 degrees out of mine and we may have been able to get a little more. For my purposes, I don't need any additional camber than that..



Sorry, DriveHard. The camber plates never came with instructions that I could share with you. If you are fairly handy with tools I think you can handle this task with a buddy. If you need any help though we would be happy to help you get these all setup and aligned for you.

It is very possible that they sent us the wrong bearing, but I never bothered to contact Ground Control as it wasn't a challenge for us to make it work.

In terms of noise, I think this is a great option if that's one of your concerns. Did I notice a difference in noise? Yes. But it really isn't bad and it's totally worth the resulting steering feedback improvement, front end grip and tire life extension I gained. I actually feel like I get more noise from the Kumho tires.

-Josh
Thanks for the offer Josh,

Install per say isint why i wanted whatever instructions they had, more i always like to see / read / look at what im going to be doing in advance. I just never put this brand in before, thats all. I have a full shop at my disposal so install will just be a matter of getting everything together.

My entire car is a compromise between it being leased, tracked, an automatic and a daily driver... But i have a blast with it none the less. I ve done everything that i could within reason, that is all un-doable when i turn it back in. 2.5 Negative will suite me and my RS'3's just fine.. ( i dont have the M3 arms) I expect to except the added sounds coming from the plates without it being overwhelming.. I sent GC an e-mail but got no response ???

Thanks Again..
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      04-03-2012, 12:12 PM   #14
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DriveHard View Post
Thanks for the offer Josh,

Install per say isint why i wanted whatever instructions they had, more i always like to see / read / look at what im going to be doing in advance. I just never put this brand in before, thats all. I have a full shop at my disposal so install will just be a matter of getting everything together.

My entire car is a compromise between it being leased, tracked, an automatic and a daily driver... But i have a blast with it none the less. I ve done everything that i could within reason, that is all un-doable when i turn it back in. 2.5 Negative will suite me and my RS'3's just fine.. ( i dont have the M3 arms) I expect to except the added sounds coming from the plates without it being overwhelming.. I sent GC an e-mail but got no response ???

Thanks Again..
No problem. Sorry I don't have anything to share that may be of some help. If you get caught up on the install just give us a call and we can try to help walk you through a certain step if you don't hear back from Ground Control. Jack could help clarify anything that trips you up. Don't worry about the noise, it's really not bad at all and it's such an effective modification.

-Josh
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      04-04-2012, 09:28 PM   #15
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Quote:
Originally Posted by uratomb View Post
Did you happened to cut the bolt right below the strut bar shorter?

When I installed mine that bolt appeared to be on the way so we just cut it down.

I think the plate was made to fit a 1 series without the strut bar and a 3 series. Got kinda pissed especially there's almost no room to stick a cutting tool there.

Also, with max camber in 245/40/18 rs3, stock suspension, I can only get -1.9 degree in front. Which rubbed a bit during hard cornering.
I had to cut the bolt below the strut bar to get it to fit. But I didn't need to trim the bushing at all to get the shock to fit.
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      04-04-2012, 10:37 PM   #16
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Quote:
Originally Posted by cpt97m3 View Post
I had to cut the bolt below the strut bar to get it to fit. But I didn't need to trim the bushing at all to get the shock to fit.
arty 0030:: party0030:
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      04-06-2012, 12:12 PM   #17
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Well Im happy to say that I installed the G/C camber plates last night..

i must say that my install looks exactly like the pic in post # 6.. No cutting / trimming removal of any thing to make it fit at all.. To tell you the truth, i didnt even have the 2 bushings that the OP has a picture of ???? the only issue i had was i was unsure of the "tightness" of the shaft Nut being that it is used to press the 2 bearing surfaces together as opposed to the oem rubber bushing squish.. a quick call to G/C and the answer was to match factory spec ( which is pretty damn tight ( LOL )

On the alignment machine -3.0 deg was easily obtainable,??? one side more than the other. I set them at -2.5deg and set the toe to "0" rear camber at -1.75 deg and stock setting of toe.

considering i thought theses were only good to -2.5 i was presently suprised.

I did replace the washers under the 3 nuts for the plate ... they supply 3 tiny washers, i just didnt like how it looked.. i went with wider washers to spread the load. I also had to shim the strut brace with a washer to clear the stud of the plate.. 1 day when i have time i will cut down all 3 studs on each side and make it look better. ( 3 hrs including the alignment install time )

driving home took a little while to get used to .. steering was a little "darty" but stable at higher speeds.. I guess i have to give the tires a chance to get comfy in there new position..

I will tell you that my 2 favorite exit / entrance ramps were still very fun.. already i see that in that simple test i can carry more speed thru the corner.

Oh and i installed a BMW Perf Exhaust while in the air... just happen to have one laying around.. ( total exh install time 15 minutes and 2 sawzall blades)

Thanks to the OP for starting the thread and giving insight to DIY situiations.. The forum can only benefit from it.
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      04-06-2012, 01:33 PM   #18
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Nice DH glad you got it done...just wait till your track event Huge difference!
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      04-07-2012, 12:14 PM   #19
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I find it interesting that we all had different installation experiences and we still all like the camber plates.

-Josh
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      04-09-2012, 12:55 AM   #20
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interesting to read that people with vorshlag camber plates are barely getting 3 degrees... i too installed these GC plates this weekend and can easily get to 4 degrees and beyond. no longer camber-impaired!!
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      06-04-2012, 02:59 PM   #21
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I DIYed the Ground Control camber plates against stock suspension. Based on this DIY article. http://www.e90post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=15397

It was tough!. With the stock springs being so long, it's difficult to get enough compression to fit the camber plate in, which is thicker than the stock top hat assembly that it's replacing. The nut on the top of the strut was also a b_tch to both remove and install. Without a top open wrench set, I was not able to torque it down to 55ft-lb spec. That said, by just using a pair of gripper pliers to hold on to the bear metal strut, I have way more thread past the nut than shown by the OP without trimming any of the camber plate bushings.

Stupidly, i managed to scratch by hood by the garage door in the process. Most seems to be in the clearcoat... guess that's what I need to work on next after the car is back from alignment.
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      06-04-2012, 03:06 PM   #22
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BiscottiGelato View Post
I DIYed the Ground Control camber plates against stock suspension. Based on this DIY article. http://www.e90post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=15397

It was tough!. With the stock springs being so long, it's difficult to get enough compression to fit the camber plate in, which is thicker than the stock top hat assembly that it's replacing. The nut on the top of the strut was also a b_tch to both remove and install. Without a top open wrench set, I was not able to torque it down to 55ft-lb spec. That said, by just using a pair of gripper pliers to hold on to the bear metal strut, I have way more thread past the nut than shown by the OP without trimming any of the camber plate bushings.

Stupidly, i managed to scratch by hood by the garage door in the process. Most seems to be in the clearcoat... guess that's what I need to work on next after the car is back from alignment.
Sorry to hear about the scratch...

What specs did you end up requesting for your alignment?

-Josh
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