Quote:
Originally Posted by bionicbelly
Same part number for the sway bar bushing for every 1er. No, they are not glued on, and no they are not designed to bind, and neither is the M3 rear bar. If that were the case, the swaybar would come with bushings glued on. It does not. If you want bars to function well, you remove the bushing, grease the inside, and reinstall. You don't bore it out.
I am not going to tell you what to do, if you want to bore it, go ahead. It's your car. But don't put bad info up. It could make someone make a poor choice.
|
You do realize there are many different packages [and part numbers] for these cars, right?
My 135i came with the M-sport package. I have all the fancy "M" symbols" everywhere, the black headliner, and the shadow-line trim. My sway bar has a DIFFERENT part number. The description even includes that the M-sport bar and bushings are a single item "Stabilizer front with rubber mounting":
http://www.realoem.com/bmw/enUS/show...diagId=31_0696
I had to cut the bushings off my sway bar. They were mechanically connected. My old 128i bushings simply pried off with a flathead screwdriver (it had all sorts of cool packages, but it was not an "M-sport 128i"); however, those bushings were also pretty bound up on the bar when mounted. Looking at RealOEM, both the 128i and 135i can come with the same package (S704A).
I literally had an entire E92 M3 subframe in my hands last weekend. The bushings on the rear bar are designed to bind. You cannot tell me otherwise. There was two layers of rubber with a metal insert in-between the two layers. The internal diameter of the rear sway bushings was significantly smaller than the OD of the bar itself. The second layer of rubber literally clamps down and grips the bar. It moves separately from the first layer of stiffer rubber. I put my full weight on the bar many times to watch the deflection in action. Like I said earlier, while the E92 M3 bushing design does allow some deflection, the bar surely could not rotate freely even with my entire body weight on it. This was not a matter of grease. The rubber acts like a rubber band on the bar.
None of this matters if you move to aftermarket bushings (whether they be stock, M3, or aftermarket sways). It does surprise me that no one else has noted any of these important details about the sway bushings that I noted above. These minute things make a significant difference in effective wheel rates... By gluing the bushings to the bar you are adding-hundreds of lbs of wheel rate. My body weight did not deflect the rear M3 sway more than 1/4" or so... Maybe if more people cared about the math of trying to calculate things like roll couple (go to a miata forum) more people would've notice by now how significant things like this are.