vtl's Alpine White 135i

[vtl]

A short while back we did a group buy on the PLM subframe mounts:

https://www.privatelabelmfg.com/prod...f-bs-b-e9x.htm

These look identical to the turner motorsport ones and are of very high quality. We did a group buy on them for a fantastic price and I decided to jump on it to extract the last few % out of the chassis.

To get these in, I really wanted to avoid dropping the entire subframe and mounting it on a hydraulic press. This would be massively time consuming and a real drainer, as I would have to do this job on a number of other cars as well. I ended up purchasing the mother of all subframe bushing tools, and bought a 20 ton hollow hydraulic ram to get these in. The goal of the hollow hydraulic ram is to be able to mount it backwards with a threaded rod botled through the middle of it, allowing it to be used as a puller instead of an extending piston. It was quite expensive, but so worth having the correct tools to save time. Having used the tool a few times it had no issues with installing the subframe mounts. It is a bit tricky to get everything aligned, but with a lot of WD40, it helps the subframe mount self align into place. The hydraulic ram itself weighs around 20kg. The mounts went in pretty trouble free on my car, no issues with the bushings getting stuck on a bad angle.

Initial driving impressions are very positive, I had Nolathane 49202 polyurethane subframe bushes before and even then it is a noticeable upgrade with less rear end movment and more stability. Wasn't expecting this much of a difference with the solid mounts to be honest.

The old Nolathane bushes are still a fantastic upgrade and less labour intensive to install, so they're still my first reccomendation, but for the last extra bit of performance can't go wrong with the solids, especially now the poly bushes are so damn expensive!


To be honest I was already pretty happy with the car and thought it was pretty dialled in already, but with all the recent changes it has really brought the car up to the next level! Theres only 3.5 weeks until the interstate Tasmania trip, so will need to do a bit more work to the car before its finished, but I can forsee this car being an absolute dream to drive on the windy Tasmanian Targa routes!

[vtl]

Just a few more thoughts on the subframe bushes and rear monoballs


- The chassis response to the steering is much more immediate and precise
- Sudden change of direction on the chassis are very stable, especially an improvement in the low speed corners with a lot of weight transfer
- More overall grip in corners when there is significant weight transfer
- Hitting road reflectors are more harsh in the rear end, but not a huge difference.
- Less intervention of DSC in slow speed corners due to the above
- Slightly different tone change in how the road bump noise transmits into the cabin (but not really any louder). Tyre roar maybe slightly more prominent with the solid subframe mounts

Overall the rear end mods were fantastic and the (somewhat) modern chassis really makes them fine for a street car comfort wise.

[vtl]

Some closeups of the PLM mounts from the group buy

[vtl]

Ended up replacing the washer neck as the old plastic was getting quite perished. Hopefully no more leaks. Not too difficult to change it out, but another item ticked off the list at least

[vtl]

Has taken me a while to get around to doing it, but finally dropped off the car to Waverley BMW yesterday morning for the Takata airbag recall. Picked up an F20 118i loan car and was a smooth process. Left the 135i there for 24 hours and picked it up this morning so didn't have to take any time off work for this job. As part of any work done to the car, they give it a wash and interior clean, which really saves me a ton of time before the upcoming Tasmania trip.

[MrBlonde]

There's some next level shit here, great to read. Love the home hoist setup.

[vtl]

After 2 months, I finally got the lower rear shock mounts installed onto the car

I got the m3 camber arms fitted, they require longer bolts as the forged alloy arms are fatter than the old ones. The standard sheetmetal arms are much thinner as steel requires less material to achieve the same strength.

My MCA lower spring pads actually fit the M3 arms better, as the bottom of the m3 camber arm is flat unlike the stock one.

Unfortunately as I got everything installed, I noted that the wheels contact the body on full droop. Turns out I have made the shocks too long The problem is that I have the monoball rear arms, which allow the suspension to droop more, and the movement arc of the camber arm starts to move towards the body as the wheel is lowered. This results in the wheel crunching into the body at full droop. The stock bushings twist up and resist the wheel being lowered, so they prevent this from happening.

I managed to get the wheels mounted with 5mm wheel spacers, but after a short test drive I can feel that the bump travel is inadequate. Very bumpy ride. I had removed the springs and determined how much travel I have before the bump stops are engaged. I only get around 25mm of bump before the wheel hits the hard bump stops, and the wheel doesnt even get tucked into the guards at full compression.

Really unfortunate that I spent all this time on these and didn't work out. Additonally theres only 2 weeks to go before the tasmania trip, so this is a major headache to be solved without much time to go

[vtl]

After pondering about the problem for ages, trying to find a good solution I decided to cut and weld the old KW competition shafts as they have the correct thread and flats milled onto them for a spanner.

I ordered some stainless steel hollow bar that would be roughly the right dimensions of the shock mount, but after 1 week they had not been shipped and was getting frustrated with the whole ordeal. I have a set of bushing dies which are basically 5mm thick pipe in a bunch of sizes in 2mm increments. I ended up cutting these and machining them to the size I needed.

All done in an evening, the parts turned out well. I determined I needed to shorten the droop by 40mm, as the droop travel was 122mm, and my target is around 80-90mm. Due to the motion ratio of 0.8 for the rear shocks, I need to shorten the shocks by around 32mm.

The new parts now control the droop that the wheel does not touch the body at full droop, and now provides adequate bump travel too. I cycled the suspension without springs and all is well, with no contact to the fuel filler neck either.

The only tweak I would probably make is to run a softer bump stop, which would allow more bump travel, as I still have plenty of clearance to the filler neck.

I'm not too pleased with the finish quality of these parts, as I have no time to nickel plate these before the upcoming Tasmania trip. They are just mild steel and will eventually get surface corrosion. Addtionally the shaft is a bit thin for my liking vs my old one which had a 20mm thick shaft. For the final revision, I will remake these parts out of stainless steel, no plating needed.

Driving impressions are fantastic, these parts have adequate bump travel and provide excellent rear grip at low speeds. Traction through sharp transitions and hairpins are fantastic now.

[vtl]

One subtle thing when using a non M subframe with an M3 camber arm is that the headlight leveing rod doesn't reach. The arm is too short and the bracket needs to be extended.

HPA make a custom bracket which PeteA has. He was kind enough to allow me to remove and measure the part.

The height appears to be the same as the M3 piece, but with a 56mm offset to the bolt holes. I made a simple bracket that replicates this position. Finished the part off with some zinc spray paint.

The part now reaches and fits well. Maybe in the future I will remake this part as a single piece. Presumably, this custom bracket could be done away entirely with a longer headlight leveling rod arm instead.

[vtl]

Have put 30k kms (October 2017) on my CSF radiator, it has caused a few issues for me in the past, and recently came across fe1rx 's
update to this thread:

https://www.1addicts.com/forums/show...3&postcount=58

Seems like the radiator rubs against the AC condenser. I took mine out and looks like no rubbing on the condensor tubes, but the end tank had worn some marks on the radiator itself.

Fe1rx was kind enough to send the excess material to my friend PeteA and I did both cars last weekend. The silicone material was very hard to source for us in Australia so big thanks to fe1rx for sending it over!

I found my radiator was quite dirty, so I gave it a degrease and looks a lot better now. Installation was straightforward, removed fan, removed oil cooler lines, disconnect some cooling hoses and the rad hinges out.

I took the opportunity to flush the coolant and back flush the heater core, I was having issues with the heater coming up to temp quite slowly and looks like back flushing it has improved the warmup time.

[vtl]

Time to reflect on the recent modifications. On the night I installed the custom shock arms, I gathered data to verify the suspension is working as expected, and had adequate bump and droop travel, and the rear springs are properly captive and not loose in the spring seats at full droop. The whole goal of this project was to increase rear droop travel to allow better contact on the road, from driving impressions this was definitely the cause of the lack of rear grip.

Comparisons to before and after (rear suspension):

Ride heights measured from bottom of wheel rim to top of the arch. Subtract 245mm if you like to measure wheel positions from center of rim.

Droop travel:

Static ride height - 584mm
Full droop before - 632mm (48mm of droop travel)
Full droop after - 670mm (86mm of droop travel)

Total difference: +38mm of additional droop travel gained


Bump travel:

Bump stop - Powerflex BS005 (48mm polyurethane)
Static ride height - 584mm
Shock travel - 155mm
Full compression - 530mm
Bump travel - 54mm

Shock travel was measured by removing the shock and compressing it to maximum by hand.

Bump travel was measured by removing both rear springs and jacking up a wheel until the car was lifting off the hoist. Likely there is a few mm of compression left in the poly bump stops. A more accurate way would be to compress the poly bump stops with a hydraulic press, and measure the compression, then measuring the wheel position with no bump stop applied. I have done this in the past on the hydraulic press, and the bump stop compresses around 10mm when a very large load (over 1000kg) was applied.

With the data above, you can work out how much the bump stop is being compressed when it starts to lift off the hoist. Working with the shock motion ratio of 0.792:

Extrapolate shock travel from wheel travel:
670mm-530mm=140mm
140mm * 0.792(shock motion ratio) = 112mm

Remaining shock travel:
155mm-112mm = 43mm

This means the bump stop is compressed around 48-43mm=5mm when the corner of the car begins to lift off the hoist. This means it could theoretically travel an additional 5mm with a large enough bump.

From this, the full compression could be estimated as approximately 524mm, assuming a large enough load can compress the bump stop 10mm. I noted at 530mm, the wheel still had plenty of clearance to the fuel filler neck (maybe 25mm+) so I could change out the bump stops if I wanted some additional wheel travel


Have graphed the results below..

[vtl]

Going to try out these Koni 70.34.95.000.0 bump stops, big thanks to titium for getting these to me!

These are more traditional cellular bump stops and have a lot more progressive bump/force curve. By my calculations these will give me approximately 10mm of extra wheel travel. I have compressed these on the hydraulic press. At full load theres around 27mm of compression. After this point it gets exponentially harder.

I also took this opportunity to Loctite the custom shock mounts in

[vtl]

A few weeks ago, I was reinstalling the battery terminal and found the thread was binding up and getting very tight, despite the terminal still being loose.

The thread ended up shearing off as i attemped to power through the hard spot, and needed to come up with a repair, as the car was not driveable.

I cut the thread off and proceeded to drill through the part, so I could thread in a new M6 threaded rod (and weld it after). This did not go too well, as the drill bit broke off, and I ended up just butt welding the threaded rod on with the tig welder (welded over the drill bit no less) If you look at the pics below, the one of the right shows the broken drill bit protruding from the bottom of the part.


I didn't have much confidence in this fix long term, so I ordered a new T nut for the battery clamp. Turns out BMW does not sell this, and require you to buy an entirely new negative terminal. Luckily the part is fairly universal:


https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Battery-...53.m2749.l2649

[135]

Excellent work and improvisation as always.

Actually, I could do with one of those custom headlight leveling rod arms!

[vtl]

Originally Posted by 135

Excellent work and improvisation as always.

Actually, I could do with one of those custom headlight leveling rod arms!

You're welcome to have the bracket I made once I revise it? I am thinking of remaking the part out of aluminium in one piece. Thinking of getting it CNC milled out of 1.6-2mm aluminium sheet, then do the bends on it and have it look like a nice oemish part.

[135]

Originally Posted by vtl

You're welcome to have the bracket I made once I revise it? I am thinking of remaking the part out of aluminium in one piece. Thinking of getting it CNC milled out of 1.6-2mm aluminium sheet, then do the bends on it and have it look like a nice oemish part.

Thanks!! PM when you get sorted with your new bracket.

[vtl]

No more wires!

Jumped on the preorder for the MHD wifi dongles. These look like a pretty simple device based on a PIC18 microcontroller and ESP8266 chip for the wifi. Seems strange that they did not simply use th ESP8266 for the processor.

The ESP8266 is just running a Jeelabs esp-link interface, which is basically a wifi->serial converter. This has a wifi access point and a web interface in which you can configure it.

By default, there is NO wifi security at all. This means anyone can connect to your car while it's plugged in. The SSID of the wifi is not unique (so if a bunch of cars were nearby it'd be hard to know which to pair to)

The first thing I did was to determine how to get a password on the MHD dongle, as you could easily log into anyone's wifi dongle and do some nasty stuff. Could easily lock everyone out of the unit by changing settings or adding a password, or upload a dodgy flash and brick the car

Just log into https://192.168.4.1 and change the SSID and password to your own!

[vtl]

A bunch of us went to Tasmania again this year, third trip we have done with some old faces and new.

Really awesome to get away for a while and just drive the cars after psending so much time and effort on them. The car felt great and all the recent changes really paid off, the car changes direction and responds so quick, I was really impressed with the dampers and how it handled the high speed bumps, the car never felt unsettled over the bumps. Had full confidence to carry lots of entry speed and just rely on the grip of the tyres to hang on.

With the camber arm mod, the low speed grip was excellent with proper droop travel keeping the tyres in contact with the road. The AD08R tyres always impressive, with some decent temperature they really hang on well even in the wet.

[abb6027]

Yes Tasmania is great. We are just heading back in the boat tonight after taking my wife's new megane RS for a run. The roads were sensational as was the Renault. My 1M is tucked up at home unfortunately. Interesting range of weather while we were here.

[vtl]

Have come up with a CAD design for the rear headlight leveling bracket

While not necessary, I wanted to clean up that piece by making it 1 piece aluminum. I first printed the design out and glued it to a 3mm thick anodised aluminium heatsink. Using the bandsaw, bench grinder and a file, I shaped it in and bent the bracket.

Bending 3mm thick aluminium was a bit tricky and could definitely improve that process. The part itself got gouged up in the process but this was just a mockup part. Will get the final part CNCed for a clean finish (few spares too incase I stuff up the bends)

I noted with my previous bracket the headlights were too high, so I had amended the design to position the headlight mounting point more inboard. The result is a headlight aim position that is very close to before I fitted the m3 camber arms which is good.

[vtl]

Decided to spend some money tidying up the car.

Have bought a new front undertray, as the non genuine one is fibreglass and sags from the heat of the exhaust. I also had scraped and damaged one of the other underbody panels as well which was replaced.

New carpets as well, the passenger front mat for E82 originally had no velcro and never sat properly.

[vtl]

New carpets, no more bunched up passenger carpet! The new part number carpets include two velcro pads which screw into the hidden holes in the carpet.

On newer E82 models they came with this version of the carpets from factory