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      04-07-2016, 05:16 PM   #23
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Quote:
Originally Posted by John_01 View Post
Just curious... Are you unhappy with the Koni struts and dampers? What is the motivation to change?
I upgraded purely for ride height adjustment and clearance due to new wheels.

I love the way the Koni's feel on the road, and I am sure the KW's will not ride so well on the street

They will be for sale shortly if anyone is interested.
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      04-07-2016, 10:30 PM   #24
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Both the koni sport and kw v2 are two very nice setups. I have koni sport on my car at the moment. Please post your opinion when you eventually try out the kw.
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      04-08-2016, 03:55 AM   #25
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Heres a better picture of how the car sits at the moment. One of my biggest concerns was lowering the car and have the problem of scraping on driveways all the time.

But I think my misconception is that if you lower the car more, it will scrape even more than the stock suspension. The stock setup is relatively low and soft, so its actually much worse than the B12 kit when it comes to speed bumps and driveways.
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      04-09-2016, 01:19 AM   #26
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Nice work vtl
Looks very tastefully dropped.
I might take her for a spin tomorrow and give you an independent report
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      04-09-2016, 03:19 AM   #27
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Originally Posted by terminator335i View Post
Nice work vtl
Looks very tastefully dropped.
I might take her for a spin tomorrow and give you an independent report
Thanks mate, gotta get yourself some shocks on your F30 to complement your lowering springs too I reckon. Totally worth the extra cost to avoid the bouncy ride of just lowering your car with springs.
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      04-27-2016, 03:09 AM   #28
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I have been running the B12s for about a year now and while I really like the ride with m3 subframe bushings and the b12s the look of the dropped front and how paranoid I have to be about clearance is a bit wearing.
The car sits very low and rolling over a particularly nasty shopping centre speed bump recently at about 5km I've bottomed.

I know the B12s are not ajustable but is there any way to add height. I do not have cambre plates at this stage and was looking in this direction anyway. Is there anything else that could also help with ride height without compromising the suspension feel, short of a new suspension setup?
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      04-27-2016, 04:48 AM   #29
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Quote:
Originally Posted by kazriel View Post
I have been running the B12s for about a year now and while I really like the ride with m3 subframe bushings and the b12s the look of the dropped front and how paranoid I have to be about clearance is a bit wearing.
The car sits very low and rolling over a particularly nasty shopping centre speed bump recently at about 5km I've bottomed.

I know the B12s are not ajustable but is there any way to add height. I do not have cambre plates at this stage and was looking in this direction anyway. Is there anything else that could also help with ride height without compromising the suspension feel, short of a new suspension setup?
Sometimes you can ad a spring pad or metal plate above the upper strut bearing/camber plates(under the car's body). This will raise the car say ~10mm's.


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      04-27-2016, 10:49 AM   #30
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Did you guys running B12 with Dinan plates also need to use adjustable end links in place of fixed ones? Or does the B12 lowering still manage to accommodate the range of stock end links?
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      04-28-2016, 12:52 AM   #31
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Quote:
Originally Posted by CRYA View Post
Did you guys running B12 with Dinan plates also need to use adjustable end links in place of fixed ones? Or does the B12 lowering still manage to accommodate the range of stock end links?
I didn't use adjustable end links. The B12 doesnt lower the car excessively so it shouldn't be an issue.
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      04-28-2016, 02:21 AM   #32
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Quote:
Originally Posted by vtl
Quote:
Originally Posted by CRYA View Post
Did you guys running B12 with Dinan plates also need to use adjustable end links in place of fixed ones? Or does the B12 lowering still manage to accommodate the range of stock end links?
I didn't use adjustable end links. The B12 doesnt lower the car excessively so it shouldn't be an issue.
not sure how much the b12 lowers the car but with my Swift springs and about 0.8" lowering I installed whiteline adjustable end links think they were like $130.

If you leave the stock links it pre loads the bar as soon as you go lower. my research determined this was bad for both handling and ride quality additional to this it puts extra strain on the stock links and they eventually start making noises/fail.

it's not a difficult job to change them over and the parts themselves are cheap (in comparison to the rest of the suspension parts) so for me it was a no brainier.

also worth noting is that I found there is almost no benefit from doing the rear end links (if you can even find a set of adjustable rears - hotchkis is the only brand I know of)
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      03-07-2017, 04:29 PM   #33
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I have gotten sick of the front ride height as it was too low for daily driving.

The front of the car is too low with the bilstein B12 kit. Steep driveways and speed bumps are getting to be annoying.

Currently the front suspension top hat has a dinan camber plate, which is 6.35mm (1/4) thick, which raises the car by that amount. What I need is a little more ground clearance, 10-15mm should help a lot.

After some pondering about the problem, I decided I needed a spacer on the top hat to raise the ride height. Theres a BMW rough road package spacer for exactly this purpose, but it is quite expensive and raises the front by 20mm, which is a bit too high for my application. Alternatively I could buy a raw aluminium billet and machine a spacer plate out from scratch, but I wasn't too keen on that idea as it would take me a long time on my little lathe.

After some research I discovered a camber plate for e36 which looked like it would be perfect for the application. The only question was whether the top hat has the same bolt pattern as e8x/9x. I have some e92 top hats at home and measured the distance between bolts and put that measurement into a calculator which would determine the bolt circle size. After searching online, I found a mechanical drawing of an e36 top hat which matched up with e92 exactly!

I purchased the E36 camber plates from here for $59:

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/251507441...%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

This is the E36 camber plate. This has a top bearing which I will completely discard. The studs were knocked out with a hammer


Bearing removed.





Plate mocked up on an old e8x/e9x top mount

These plates can be used as is once the bearing has been disassembled. For my car i didn't want the extra material in the middle cos of my OCD so I wanted to machine out the bore so it looks nice an clean. This will also be helpful in allowing the top mounts to be accessible if I ever want to disassemble or install coilovers with strut adjustments.




My initial attempts failed and resulted in the part flying out of the chuck on my lathe. 2nd attempt took a while but finally got it all machined. This took forever due to the cutout in the middle of the plate. An interrupted cut is very hard on this small lathe. Although I had botched the first set of plates, luckily the old scrapped plates were a perfect way to clamp the new plates onto the lathe.


My new plates




The assembled kit. Longer countersunk M8 bolts and new nuts were purchased to accommodate the thicker assembly.




Measuring up how much lift i will get. The plates are 9mm in thickness and I installed the top mount renforcement plate from an e92 (3.5mm), resulting in around 12.5mm of lift.






Strut assembly how it was, very dirty:


Used a custom 13mm crowsfoot socket to disassemble/assemble the camber plate and spacer plates. This was constructed by using a 13mm ring spanner cut off and welded to a socket adapter


Strut assembly cleaned with spacer attached





Before:


After:

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      03-08-2017, 12:23 PM   #34
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@VTL:

I have the B12 kit on a 128i, also with Dinan plates. The front is nowhere near how low yours is...strange. Have a friend with a 135 and the same suspension minus the plates, and even his isn't as low as yours.

Wonder if your shock mounts are old/worn and compressed? Or springs sagging?

Great job on adapting the camber plates BTW.
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      03-08-2017, 03:38 PM   #35
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Quote:
Originally Posted by asbrr View Post
@VTL:

I have the B12 kit on a 128i, also with Dinan plates. The front is nowhere near how low yours is...strange. Have a friend with a 135 and the same suspension minus the plates, and even his isn't as low as yours.

Wonder if your shock mounts are old/worn and compressed? Or springs sagging?

Great job on adapting the camber plates BTW.
All the parts I have fitted were brand new, on the first page I have the shopping list and basically every part in the front suspension is new. The springs have sagged maybe 5mm since installation. I am not sure why it sits so low but I have seen some b12s in other pics and seems to be around a similar height. Maybe you can check the part number on your spring as see if its the same part number as mine? Mine has 112001201VA written on it as the part number
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      03-08-2017, 05:45 PM   #36
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Quote:
Originally Posted by vtl View Post
All the parts I have fitted were brand new, on the first page I have the shopping list and basically every part in the front suspension is new. The springs have sagged maybe 5mm since installation. I am not sure why it sits so low but I have seen some b12s in other pics and seems to be around a similar height. Maybe you can check the part number on your spring as see if its the same part number as mine? Mine has 112001201VA written on it as the part number
Doh! Just realized you're the thread OP , I used your post last summer to help me build the struts etc, thanks for that.

Yes very strange indeed - I will check the springs in a few weeks when I'm switching over from winter tires to my summer setup and post back on here with pics.
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      03-14-2017, 07:08 AM   #37
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didn´t you buy a 4cilinder B12 kit by accident?
or maybe they send you the wrong springs?
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      04-11-2017, 10:59 AM   #38
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Quote:
Originally Posted by vtl View Post
All the parts I have fitted were brand new, on the first page I have the shopping list and basically every part in the front suspension is new. The springs have sagged maybe 5mm since installation. I am not sure why it sits so low but I have seen some b12s in other pics and seems to be around a similar height. Maybe you can check the part number on your spring as see if its the same part number as mine? Mine has 112001201VA written on it as the part number
vtl

So as requested, I checked the part numbers on my front springs:

112001301VA
Also says KBA 91401

Part number on the shock is:

35-115939
VE3-B593

So there does seem to be a difference. Hope this helps.

Ash
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      11-08-2017, 02:48 PM   #39
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Interesting thread. I'm facing a similar problem with a front end that seems to have sagged over time. I'm assuming you needed source replacement mounting allen bolts for the Dinan Camber plates to get sufficient length to pass through your spacers. Any hint where you found them or what you used?

Thanks!

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      11-09-2017, 08:28 PM   #40
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For an extra 9mm of stack height you will want at least 9mm of extra length on the bolts. I used M6 countersunk high tensile bolts with a 17.5mm length: M6x17.5mm

Ultimately I ended up removing the Bilsteins and installing KW V2 coilovers. I would not waste time adding spacer plates on the Bilsteins since the reduced shock travel means you are constantly on the bump stops and ruins the ride quality of the car.
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      04-11-2018, 02:15 PM   #41
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Any updates about the B12-Pro kit? happy with it? holding up well?

ps: Thank you for linking the parks required for fresh new rubber, instead of swapping out from the old suspension.
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      04-11-2018, 05:24 PM   #42
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Zombie_Head View Post
Any updates about the B12-Pro kit? happy with it? holding up well?

ps: Thank you for linking the parks required for fresh new rubber, instead of swapping out from the old suspension.
Look at my previous post. Was good initially, but overall I should have just gotten coilovers. No was not happy with it and did not hold up well over time. Front springs sagged and ride height kept going lower and lower.
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      04-12-2018, 12:44 PM   #43
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Quote:
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Look at my previous post. Was good initially, but overall I should have just gotten coilovers. No was not happy with it and did not hold up well over time. Front springs sagged and ride height kept going lower and lower.
My mistake, did not catch the last post.

I kept coming across the same issue on German forums with regards to Bilstein, how they do not hold up well with time and a few users reporting clunking noises and Bilstein replacement parts for them.

I am sure it is a small percentage of owners, nevertheless something to consider.
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      05-20-2018, 07:29 PM   #44
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Quote:
Originally Posted by vtl View Post
Look at my previous post. Was good initially, but overall I should have just gotten coilovers. No was not happy with it and did not hold up well over time. Front springs sagged and ride height kept going lower and lower.
Wonder if you can help me with a problem I'm having.
I just installed BMW PS and style 264's on my E88. Tires are 235/40/18.
When the steering is straight the tires are tucked under the fenders, when I turn there is about 3/4" of clearance between the tire and the fender lip which results in fender lip rubbing when turning and hitting bumps. They don't rub over bumps in a straight line.
Front camber pins are knocked out (Lemfoerder mounts) and I just had an alignment done, spec sheet states fronts are both set at -1.1 camber.

I see a couple of options.

1) Camber plates as you have done to get additional clearance.
2) Get a lower profile front tire, maybe a 35 ?

I would honestly rather not add negative camber and trash my tires, it's a daily driver that's fun to drive with good looks, not a track car, so I'm not looking for great handling, just fun. However, I can't deal with the rubbing in the turns over bumps.

Questions - is it possible to put camber plates in that will give me extra clearance without getting extended bolts in the strut mounts ? Ie, can I just unbolt the three nuts, lower the strut, slip the plate in then bolt it back up again without having to take it all apart or even remove the assembly from the knuckle ?
Or, do you think that a 35 profile will be enough difference that I will gain sufficient clearance when turning that it won't rub. It's really hard to say how hard it's hitting or if it's "only just catching it" so I guess I'm asking a question that's impossible for you to answer.

Any other suggestions ?

I have some 17's with tires on them that will give me a diameter that is overall almost the same as an 18 with a 35 profile so I'm going to run those on the front for a day or two to see if they rub. If they don't, I guess I have my answer.

The 264's came standard on some versions of the E88 so I know they must work, but that was on stock suspension with 215/40/18's, the BMW PS is a bit lower and that width and profile makes their overall diameter smaller as well.

I'm already about $1500 into this - can't just chase the solution, need an answer rather than throwing money at it.

Any suggestions ?
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