E30 Zone

Can front anti roll bars be upgraded on a 325i Touring? Is it worth it?

So in my quest to get back to closer to normal height springs on my Touring (-40mm too low for me), a mechanic friend told me if I want to maintain good cornering and low roll, while reverting back to -15mm or full/standard height BMW springs, I should probably consider upgrading the front anti roll bar. But I have looked through here and other websites etc and can't see much evidence of people urating just the front arb on e30's /e30 tourings.

I understand from a thread here that e30 M3's use an uprated 'drop-link' setup rather than distinctly bigger arb's. How easy would it be to achieve a similar set up at the front on 325i touring, if this is better than uprated arb? How much might this cost? All your input appreciated!

Not really worth it for driving on road.
Track, yes.

Hi there. The ARBs on your touring will be fairly beefy anyway, the cabrio may be the only variant with a thicker one, I'm not sure and I cant remember off the top of my head. I have used both H&R and Eibach uprated ARBs and can guarentee they are a very worth while modification, very flat cornering while retaining a good level of comfort.

I will say that the rest of the suspension should be up to scratch, pay partcular attention to the bushes etc, its pointless trying to fix a problem with uprated parts when the issue lies elsewhere.

There is a way to uprate your current bars, drill a new hole for the drop link to bolt through. On the flat end of the bar the hole needs to be inboard of the one that already exists this will stiffen it up a bit through the leverage effect, ie less leverage for the wishbone to use to twist the bar = flatter cornering

Hope that helps Maggs

You can just about make out the extra hole drilled in my front ARB!

Local engineering place charged me £15 and commented that 'It was a bit difficult'..

daimlerman wrote:You can just about make out the extra hole drilled in my front ARB!

Local engineering place charged me £15 and commented that 'It was a bit difficult'..

I did exactly that and I used two HSS drill bits as the metal is seriously hard.

@pigeon I'm also looking at welding a bracket and using M3 drop links to futher increase the stiffness.

maggspower wrote: The ARBs on your touring will be fairly beefy anyway, the cabrio may be the only variant with a thicker one

Checked this out this weekend as I thought the touring ones were thicker - not so - the touring and saloon front ARB's have the same part number on realoem. I think The tourings have stiffer rear ARB's though

capri_rob wrote:

maggspower wrote: The ARBs on your touring will be fairly beefy anyway, the cabrio may be the only variant with a thicker one

Checked this out this weekend as I thought the touring ones were thicker - not so - the touring and saloon front ARB's have the same part number on realoem. I think The tourings have stiffer rear ARB's though

I reckon a lot of this will depend on previous owners,plus a number of different ARB's would have been available as options.
Any decent supplier of ARB bushes asks what size bar is currently fitted.....

Uprated roll bars work a treat on road and are bound to do a better job on track i have the h&r bars on my touring

town325i wrote:Uprated roll bars work a treat on road and are bound to do a better job on track i have the h&r bars on my touring

And Mark is know to(add Brummie accent) 'To trundle on a bit'!