Variation in ride height?

[Bimmer-Bob]

So I just adjusted my rear ride height, and I measure about a 1/4" difference between rear left side and rear right side. Is this a big deal, or is it within an acceptable "margin of error?" FWIW, even on stock suspension, I measured a similar difference. What gives?

[Hairy]

Depends..... you need to have your corner weights checked. That's the real determining factor on appropriate ride heights.

[Bimmer-Bob]

I don't know - I hear some people say that corner balancing is necessary in all cases and others say that it's overkill for street cars. I'll probably eventually do it, but I'm going to wait a few more months until I'm back in the US (no real performance shop around at the moment).

In the meantime, I'll probably just drop the right rear corner a bit to try and match the ride heights better.

[pixelblue]

That sounds too much bob. Keep in mind the weight transfers diagonally. I would keep them equal or close.

[Bimmer-Bob]

Yeah, I'm going to fix it tomorrow morning. It's a little bit of a pain because the wheel has to come off to make the adjustment, and then you have to put everything back together and drive around the block or whatever before you can see if you lowered enough or too much.

Besides the potential handling problems, it's just visually off, too. You wouldn't think 1/4" would be so noticeable, but once you know it's there it just sort of sticks out and seems really glaringly obvious.

[Dackelone]

A few months back when I put on my winter tires - just for the fun of it I measured my cars OE ride height. I forget the exact numbers but... the front side was within a few mm's Left to Right... but the Right Rear was like 25mm's higher than the Left Rear. That was with half a tank of fuel. I was kind of shocked... but that was how my car measured.

The reason why I measured my car's ride height was because my floor jack would not fint under the car with my summer tires on. But it fits with my winter tires. I have OE summers and 205/55HR17's for winters on 7jx17's.

Dackel

[Bimmer-Bob]

Dackel,

Right rear is the higher side on my car, too. Doesn't matter if the tanks is full or not - I happened to fill up yesterday after getting to under 1/4 tank, and the right side was still higher. Kind of weird that the car sits that way stock, but at least I can fix it with the ride height adjuster now...

[Bimmer-Bob]

After some trial and error, I got the right rear to drop another 1/4". But the car dropped a little bit more on the left side, without me even touching it, so the difference is down to about 1/8" (or less). For some reason that left rear corner REALLY wants to sit lower than the right rear corner. Oh well, I'm not too worried about it - the difference is pretty negligible at this point (like I said, they were about 1/4" apart on stock suspension) and if I go any lower I won't be able to get my jack under the differential anymore!

Probably just go for a corner balancing when I'm back Stateside for peace of mind.

[Dackelone]

BMW 135i ride height measurements


With my WINTER tires on the car! My numbers were a little bit off from my above post. But... the RR corner of teh car DOES sit higher than the other side. Here are my measurements:

BMW V-Speiche 141 on Goodyear Eagle GW3 Runflat 205/50 R17 89H 7j x17” BMW alloys.

I measured the ride height from the center line of each wheel. From the concrete garage floor until the edge of the fender/quarter panel.

LF = 65.1 cm RF = 65.2 cm
LR = 64.2 cm RR = 64.8 cm


Dackel