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02-05-2009, 11:52 AM | #1 |
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Review: KW V3s and M3 suspension parts
So I finally finished up my second round of mods and I wanted to post a review for you guys. For those that are curious here's my review from the first round of mods: http://www.1addicts.com/forums/showthread.php?t=222148
Anyway here's the parts that I've installed in this round: - KW V3 coilovers - M3 Front lower wishbone kit + Regulating rod - M3 Front tension rod kit - M3 Rear guide rod Kit - M3 Rear upper link kit KW V3 Coilovers: Reason/Result: Well I think the reason is pretty obvious, but I mainly wanted to improve the handling and stiffen up the suspension. Now did I really have to get the V3's, no I don't think so. I'm not a track junkie or anything, but I'm the kind of guy that if I decide to spend the money I'm going to do it right and not hold back. I really really hate buyer's remorse, so I try to avoid it at all costs. I might not use all the adjust ability now, but I feel better knowing it's available. As for a drop, I actually didn't really want to drop the car much. That said I've been very happy with the result. This was the first suspension mod I did and it did a great deal to improve the handling. The car feels so much better now. I actually expected the ride to be pretty harsh, but surprisingly it's not. It's very compliant and the major plus is the body roll was greatly reduced. I was now able to throw the car around corners quite a bit faster than before. As for the drop, I found that I really liked the look and ended up bringing it down quite a bit more than I had planned. I swear I'll get some pictures for you guys. Ordering/Shipping: I ordering these from Roger at **********s on cyber Monday when they were having a sale. I got them for a very good price because of it, which also made it a lot easier to go with the V3's over the V2's. Now there was a slight hiccup in the shipping part. I was contacted by Roger not long after placing my order and was told that the V3's were on backorder. They would be getting a set for the E87 shortly, but the E82 set wouldn't come for a few weeks after that. I was told that the E87 set was the exact same, but I still opted to wait for the E82 set. Then about a week later a set of coilovers arrived and when I check, it was the E87 set. I contacted Roger to let him know what had happened and he said the warehouse people jumped the gun. Now that I had the set in my hands it made the option to wait even harder to choose. I decided to contact KW and verify that the parts were the exact same for the E87 and E82. They are the exact same parts, so I kept them and moved forward with the install. Installation: This one took quite a while. I think we started the install at about 3 in the afternoon and didn't finish it up until 1am. Now there certainly were breaks for food and whatnot, but it was still a lengthy install. I'd go into detail, but it's been a while and really I don't remember all the details. There were a couple of problems we ran into along the way. The first was that for getting the front springs of the top mounts and the top mounts onto the new springs you need to use a spring compressor. My buddy works at a shop, so he was able to run everything down there and use the shops. The next problem we ran into almost stopped us in our tracks. For the rear struts you need hold the strut in place when tightening the top nut. In order to do with on the stock struts you could put a wrench on them because the top of the strut is a hex. For the KW's the top is only flat on two sides, so in order to keep it in place we had to use a crescent wrench. Well a friend that was helping us with the install didn't tighten down the crescent wrench enough and it ended up deforming the casing pretty bad and created a couple of burrs on the sides. This wouldn't have been too big of a problem if we didn't forget to put one of the stock pieces back on the strut. In order to get the strut back off we needed to take off that top nut, well with the burrs in the way that wasn't really happening. After messing with it for what was probably an hour and half we finally dug up a dremel and were able to get the burrs down and the nut off. Then when putting the strut back on we crossthreaded one of the bolts for the shock mount . I seriously thought we were going to break that bolt getting it on, but luckly that didn't happen. It's holding fine, but I've still gone ahead and ordered a new shock mount and some bolts. They are sitting im my living room, but I haven't gotten around to swapping out the parts. The other problem we ran into was when putting the spring into the left rear it didn't seem to sit quite right, but we got it in and bolted everything up. When putting the spring in the right rear a stock piece where the top of the spring mounts fell out and the new spring perch fit in much better. We had to go back to the left rear and remove the stock piece and everything fit just fine. As for the settings on the struts I set things up the way KW recommended in their documentation. They have a range of 3-18 clicks from full stiff for the rebound and I set it at 8. The bump has a range of two full turns from stiff and I set it to 3/4 of a turn from full stiff. So everything is a little on the stiff side, but like I said above the ride is pretty darn comfortable. M3 Suspension Parts: Reason/Result: I had read quite a bit about these upgrades and it really seemed like it would be the next step if I wanted to improve my suspension. Given the understeer that I tend to see with this car the added camber up front seemed like a no brainer. Now for the result. What can I say, these parts have transformed the way my car feels. It's given the ride a stiffer feel, which was especially nice in the rear because I felt like I wanted to turn the stiffness on my KW's up a click or two, but after this I don't feel it's necessary. Going into a turn the wheel feels a little bit heavier, which I'm really liking. The turn in is so crisp and responsive now. When going through the turn the car very planted now. It just go where ever I put the damn thing, I'm seriously loving the way the car handles now. I'd guess that I'm easily able to take turns 10mph faster than when I just had the coilovers and the car feels so much more controlled. On most of my favorite turns I still haven't really found the new limit and when I have found the limit the car does a really good job of communicating it to me. I get a nice chirp out of the tires before it really starts to break looks and then a nice and controlled slide that's a lot more neutral than before. The car does still tend toward understeer unless you power the back end around, but it's definitely a lot less than before. Ordering/Shipping: I order all these parts from Harold at HP Autowerks. He was incredibly helpful and answered all my messages very quickly. The main reason that I wanted to go with him and HP because of all the work they did to verify that these parts could be used on the E9x and E8x (If you've read the threads about these parts than you will know how much he's contributed). He had just run out of stock when I placed my order, but he shipped the parts out as soon as he received more and kept me updated on the shipping status. All the parts were wrapped up in bubble wrap and they were labeled so I could tell what parts were for the left and right. I would highly recommend ordering from Harold and I will be doing it again when the time comes. Installation: Like all my other installs I got help from a good friend who's a mechanic. There really isn't a whole lot to talk about with this one. Just jack up the car unbolt the stock parts and bolt in the m3 parts. It really is pretty straight forward I think anybody with the right tools wouldn't have a hard time with it. Alright that's all I've got for now guys, I hope you've enjoyed the review and please feel free to ask any questions. What's next you ask, well once I've saved up enough I'm going to order a new rear diff with a 3.46 final drive and the quaife LSD from Harold. I can't wait for the new diff, but it's going to be a few months. Other than that I'd like to get some camber plates (most likely voshlag), so I can get some more negative camber up front. Oh and before I get totally chewed out for not having pictures I'm working on it. I don't have a good camera and my friend that took some pics has been lazy about getting them off onto a computer. As soon as I get some I'll add them to this thread. I've attached a camera phone shot to hold you guys over.
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02-05-2009, 01:39 PM | #2 |
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Nice write up....thanks for the update.
I plan on adding some coilovers to mine in the near future, your write up is helpful to anticipate what to expect. Thanks. |
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02-05-2009, 02:19 PM | #3 |
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Thanks for the review, it's encouraging to see that these M3 suspension parts work exactly as advertised...
In regards to your comment on the remaining understeer - have you thought about installing the M3 rear sway bar? (Together with the subframe bushings while you're at it?) My understanding is that the M3 rear sway will make your car pretty neutral, without the need for additional camber up front. |
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02-05-2009, 03:25 PM | #5 | |
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Right now I just plan on getting camber plates to add a little camber and I think that will get rid of enough to make me very happy with the way the car handles.
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02-05-2009, 03:26 PM | #6 |
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Yeah, I haven't really measured everything, but the rear is a bit higher. Originally it was even higher than that, but I brought it down a bit. I think I like the way it's sitting currently, so I doubt I'll adjust things anymore.
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02-05-2009, 04:42 PM | #7 | |
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So I can quite understand your concern - not to mention, the 1 has a significantly shorter wheelbase and if I understand how these things wok, that means snap oversteer is more likely than in the 335 or M3. I was also thinking about the 14mm E92 Performance Catalog bar (which is the M sport bar in Europe). I know that one suspension engineer didn't seem to think it would do much compared to the 11mm (?) stock bar, at least it shouldn't create a tendency towards snap oversteer either. I used to have a matched set of adjustable UUC sways on my E46 330i and they worked very well with the M Sport suspension on that car. And with the adjustability you could tweak things based on front camber, future lowering or just driving preference. Maybe I'll talk to the UUC guys to see how they decided on the bar sizing for the 135i... |
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02-05-2009, 05:12 PM | #8 |
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If it were easier to swap out the rear sway I think I would be a lot more inclined to mess around with the different options, but as it stands now dropping the rear subframe doesn't sound like a lot of fun so I'm kind of just avoiding it. Maybe if there is every consensus about the best sway bar set up I'll move forward with the swap. Also right now I'm really happy with the way the car feels, very controlled, so I don't really want to screw that up.
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02-08-2009, 12:21 AM | #10 | |
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You kind got things wrong but it is not a big deal. The roll bars of M3 will have almost identical effect on your 1 series. There is a difference between the cars is spring rates and biasing but it is fairly small. This all comes down to load transfer on. You’re likely to see snap over steer condition on an unbalanced car as this is usually a sign of rapid large load transfer which doesn’t happen on a balanced car. On the e90post/additcs forums there are too many moderators / members that tend to give opinions that are technically and a partially incorrect to the point of being ridiculous. I would suggest anyone who wants to get advice on setup for other go to another forum that is more technically inclined. You will only find bad advice here in general. Orb |
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02-08-2009, 12:39 PM | #11 | |
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AW 135i w/ blackette, performance short shift kit, BMW alarm, Performance rotors, APEX ARC-8 wheels, Direzza Star Spec 235/275, Dinan stage 3 suspension, M3 wishbones/tension rods/front sway/rear subframe bushings and thats all folks! |
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02-09-2009, 04:20 PM | #13 | |
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02-09-2009, 04:21 PM | #14 |
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Cool, thanks for the info. I think the camber plates will be my next change to the suspension.
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02-10-2009, 04:17 PM | #16 |
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Nice mods, added to an already impressive list of mods...and, of course, good reviews.
Your mods are all well chosen--down to the grey finish of your Breyton's. Speaking of which, I'm assuming there's still no rubbing at all with your 225/255 setup, or were any fender mods necessary with the KW's and lowering? |
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02-10-2009, 04:56 PM | #17 | |
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Legal Disclaimer: Anything I or anyone else says about my vehicle on this website(1addicts.com or any affiliated or nonaffiliated sites), pertaining to modifications, is only to gain acceptance from my/our peers, and does not actually represent anything actually existing on my car, and thus, cannot be held against me in any issues, i.e. warranty claims, that may arise.
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02-10-2009, 09:17 PM | #18 | |
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As for camber plates, I would steer clear of Vorshlag camber plates. The engineering is good since they address thrust and do not have a fixed spring perch. The problem with these plates is that you lose over 1/3” of travel and the stack height is off by a lot. The end result of the stack height being off so much is over preloading the main spring and loss of droop travel and already helped one to many people with suspension problem because of lack of droop travel. The oversight is pretty much incompetence. The KW camber plates are the best I seen in the so far as deal with thrust and have compliance to compensate for spring binding. They are relatively noise free. Avoid any fixed perch camber plates and if do encounter them throw them in the trash with the greatest amount force. Orb Last edited by Orb; 02-11-2009 at 09:10 PM.. |
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02-10-2009, 09:24 PM | #19 |
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Hum,
Start with this one. There are some very knowledgeable people there so ask question once you sort out who the smart one are or do the opposite anything that others say in this forum. I am very serious. http://www.iwsti.com/forums/gd-suspe...ng-stiffening/ Orb Last edited by Orb; 02-11-2009 at 08:34 AM.. |
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02-11-2009, 03:53 AM | #20 |
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hmmm...
I was looking into the Vorshlag plates to use with koni fsd shocks and stock springs. Is there another camber plate that works with stock springs? KW plates only work with coil-overs right? thanks, justin |
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02-11-2009, 03:13 PM | #21 | |
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Legal Disclaimer: Anything I or anyone else says about my vehicle on this website(1addicts.com or any affiliated or nonaffiliated sites), pertaining to modifications, is only to gain acceptance from my/our peers, and does not actually represent anything actually existing on my car, and thus, cannot be held against me in any issues, i.e. warranty claims, that may arise.
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02-12-2009, 06:28 PM | #22 | |
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+1 on those Vorshlag plates! |
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