bmwe21.net forums

Thegs wrote:Love this 80's color, to bad there aren't to many around anymore. Love the wheels, you have some more specs of these? Good work on the upgrades, hope to upgrade mine soon to PU bushes as well.

All I know is that they are 17" BBS RM (?) replica. I'll have a look and see if I can find more specs and let you know.

Got my hands on a high pressure warm water thingy, to get things cleaned up before paint:



More bits getting painted:



Rear shocks assembled:



Reminder of how they came off:




Burning out old bushings:






One of the rear trailing arms was rusted through:



Luckily found a brand new old stock online for cheap, but now I need to figure out how to change the bearing etc over.



Unsure if I should replace the bushings with the new poly ones from strongflex or leave the orginal unused ones. Advice appreciated.

Nice work! Are those new bilsteins? Or did you overhaul the old ones?

New bilsteins all round Got them from W&N.

So got on with moving the bearing and driveflange over from the rusted trailing arm to the new one........

Rust holes in the old one:






Pulling off the flange:





Driving it out:



All out:





This is where the fun stopped. Stopped taking photos too it seems.. Turns our my new trailing arm is different to my old one! The outward facing bearing is larger than the inward facing bearing

Bloody annoying - never picked up on that there are different types.

Bummer! Didn't know that either but it appears that all 320's as well as the 323i have a different setup with two different bearings indeed.

Ah I see, thanks for checking.

I guess these things are part of any project like this

I guess I'll just post it up in the for sale section.

Front struts with new shocks, springs, rubbers and top mounts assembled:



After everything is fitted there seems to be a little play in the top mounts - normal?

Nope, there should be no freeplay on the top mounts as they will produce a loud metal to metal knocking sound once installed. You need to check what the cause is: wrongly installed or freeplay on the bearing. Where did you get the top mounts from?

Bugger...I'll have to take another look. Pretty sure I assembled it all correctly.

Got these from fcp:

https://www.fcpeuro.com/products/bmw-st ... 31110195my

Ahhh they sell Meyle I see. Sadly that is the cheapest Chinese cr@p available on the market today so that may be your issue.

Crap. Yes they are meyle. Didn't know they weren't good quality.. The bmw ones where so expensive here (€190 for a pair) so I got these. Guess I'll take another look at the ones I have and see how bad they are..

If the old ones aren't dried out to bits and there's no freeplay on those bearings perhaps these are better. But check out what the actual cause is, first!

Re Meyle see viewtopic.php?f=5&t=5185&p=242453&hilit=Meyle#p242453

Thanks man, will do.

I did pick up on that thread, but somehow missed that about meyle.

Well I just cleaned up this E21 suppliers list and it is now comprised to one page, makes it easier for all of us!