E30 steering joint bolts

Post Sun Mar 30, 2014 12:53 pm

Fitting an E46 rack and I plan to shorten the E30 steering joint by removing the rubber joint and bolting the two halves together.

What bolts are best to use? I'm sure I've seen somebody mention they used bolts from BMW, but can't find any mention of bolt size.

Cheers

Post Sun Mar 30, 2014 1:45 pm

You might find one half of the linkage has 10mm holes and the other has 8mm holes, if it does then you can either use 10mm bolts with the ends turned down and threaded to 8mm, or just drill the linkage to 10mm both sides

Post Sun Mar 30, 2014 4:01 pm

I just used some M8 bolts with a shank, can't remember the length though. The bolts will only go in one way (bottom up I think) and if they're too long then they'll foul on the shaft itself before you can do them up. I bought some of the locking nuts found where the U clamps for the rear anti roll bar are attached to the trailing arms from BMW for that purpose. I expect they're dotted around the car, but that's where I 'sourced' mine from.

Put a washer between each half of the linkage for each bolt, as I found the surfaces weren't parallel to each other. Didn't want to to it up and fracture the aluminium.

Interestingly, with an M10 engine, this moved the linkage much closer to the exhaust downpipe, to the pipe I had to chop the downpipe, bend it and re-weld it in a few places. However, it did mean that the rack could move to the rear holes on the subframe, and that made the car nicer to drive.

Post Tue Apr 01, 2014 7:57 pm

Cheers guys. I thought I'd read the holes might be different sizes, but couldn't find it anywhere.

I'm using an M42 manifold (M44 conversion) so some fiddling of the pipes will be needed to get the rack in the rear holes, but for the mean time I'm using the front holes so I can get the car moveable under its own steam.