E30 Zone

a little while ago i had put on a set of 40mm springs ,and the shop who did it gave my car an "alignment". But now she has a Toe In problem in the rear. I took the car this weekend to a tyre suspension place and they gave me some bad news, they cant fix it and gave me 2 options, new rear suspension or panel beater to bend the rear suspension :(:(:(:(
HOLY CRAP!!!

Thought there were bushes available which took care of the toe problems caused by lowering?

Toe in or negative camber?

Ive got both neg camber and "toe in" on front and rear.

toe in, and a little camber. The toe in is the problem, makes the car unstable at any speed. The back feels like its "bouncy". It doesnt give me a confident feeling when i drive her.

Offset bushes are available which will adjust both toe in and camber at the rear, but lowering shouldn't cause toe in, so the first thing is to find out why, and replace anything that's worn or bent.
Then you may find that offset bushes are still needed to deal with the increased neg camber caused by lowering.

Brianmoooore wrote:Offset bushes are available which will adjust both toe in and camber at the rear, but lowering shouldn't cause toe in, so the first thing is to find out why, and replace anything that's worn or bent.
Then you may find that offset bushes are still needed to deal with the increased neg camber caused by lowering.

thanks for the advice, these off set bushes, will i need to have them made up?

Hyperion wrote:

Brianmoooore wrote:Offset bushes are available which will adjust both toe in and camber at the rear, but lowering shouldn't cause toe in, so the first thing is to find out why, and replace anything that's worn or bent.
Then you may find that offset bushes are still needed to deal with the increased neg camber caused by lowering.

thanks for the advice, these off set bushes, will i need to have them made up?

Available from BMW, and as aftermarket.

If u car has excessive toe in, what would it do to the wear of the tyres ? I know excessive negative camber wears the insides of the rears, but could toe in also do this ?

Stevin wrote:If u car has excessive toe in, what would it do to the wear of the tyres ? I know excessive negative camber wears the insides of the rears, but could toe in also do this ?

yeah this finishs up the tyres aswell, i have slight camber and a toe in issue, so whats happening is the tyre is getting dragged against its tread causing tyre wear.

hope that makes sense

but lowering shouldn't cause toe in

Pretty sure that any compression of the rear suspension causes the wheels to toe out doesn't it?

Turbo-Brown wrote:

but lowering shouldn't cause toe in

Pretty sure that any compression of the rear suspension causes the wheels to toe out doesn't it?

this were it gets scary i think the used a 10ton air jack to "fix" the camber on the rear wheels and in turn gave me a nice set of Toe in.

i thought when you lowered them at the back you got neg camber and a bootload of toe in?

Latest, just went to the dealers to get quoted on the rear trailing arm/ controling arm. They quoted me R6100.00 each (which is around 550 pounds)...so thats a no no.
option B: is these , anyone know anything about them , used them, broke them, love them, hate them etc.
http://www.bimmerworld.com/html/e30-3-s ... shings.htm
thx

this were it gets scary i think the used a 10ton air jack to "fix" the camber on the rear wheels and in turn gave me a nice set of Toe in.

Does this mean that they have actually bent the metal of your rear suspension?

I had a car which had bent rear suspension, was very unstable at speed, had no confindence in it!

I don't think a set a bushes will solve this...

How is SA for second hand rear suspension e30 parts?

oh no i was afraid someone was gonna say that. i phoned around, but no one has come back to me. As far as first time experiences go, this is my first at lowering a car. DonÔš't think i will do it again, this whole experience has left a bad taste in my mouth. If you cant trust one of those suspension "experts" then who u can trust.

What was the exact aligment?

Ok guys, another little update on this subject. Hey Aico below is a copy of the last alignment, u can see the toe in has been circled:

So i have decided to go through the whole mission of sourcing a "new" rear suspension, the dealers are out of the question, so i used my lunch break and drove to a scrap yard to try my luck. The guy over there pointed me in the general direction of heap of cars and i found this. He said he would give the whole thing to me for R850 (about 77 pounds). Only thing i am not sure about is that it is from a 323i. So my question is that, is there any major differences between the rear suspensions of the different models? and will this work?

hmm that looks like its got drum rear brakes, did 323 not have discs?

Thats the major differences as the trailing arms are different.

What does your car currently have? Disc or drums?

TBH it doesn't look in that nice condition either...

In the UK Ԛ£77 for drums would be pretty expensive, jonb usually sells DISCs set ups for around Ԛ£50... Wonder how much shipping would be??

thanks for the advice, my car has Discs so that one is a no no, will look around more when i get the chance.