Advice: Removing Rear Beam

[Project_E30]

Any advice on removing the rear beam which the trailing arm's attach to? Heard its not a nice job. Any tips?

Also any advice on removing the two bushes once removed?

Many thanks in advance

[Project_E30]

Any advice on removing the rear beam which the trailing arm's attach to? Heard its not a nice job. Any tips?

Also any advice on removing the two bushes once removed?

Many thanks in advance

[jonb]

darren

the exhaust needs to be removed, as does the diff, struts, brake lines, abs wires etc.

the 22 or 23ml subframe bolts need taking off, as does the plates. these are secured by 2 allen bolts either side on the sills.

with a bit of persuation the subframe should drop.

once off you can burn the old bushes out with a torch.

[dazleeds]

heard this jobs a bitch?? how bad is it???think mine starting to feel loose excessively tail happy Daz

[A1BMW325iSport]

there was how2 on here before i remember with loads of pics

[charlE30]

It is a pain to do, took me 2 days to do all the rear bushes but found this article very helpful

http://www.bmwe30.net/cgi-bin/datacgi/d ... Section=05

Good luck mate

[Jos]

It's pretty hard to do, you have to get fairly agricultural with the subframe bolts to get them to let go, we had to beat the crap out of them to get them to let go, and that was after we had torched the bushes out.

Do a search in this section, there are loads of threads about it, most of them cover helpful ways people have discovered that makes the job a little easier.

[Martinaston]

The correct way is to push the drift bolts up into the car and then it's just surposed to drop down. Yeah right.

When i did this once the shocks were off the rear the springs were still pushing down on the trailing arms twisting the axle carrier out of true making it nigh on impossible to drop it. So the springs had to come off first, i then surpported the trailing arms and one swift knock with a lump of wood and off it dropped.

You probably need a press to get the new bushes in but i didn't even want to think about that and got a guy local to do it for Ԛ£20

[nadz325i]

pita job!! long job but end results worth it

basically did jonb way to get to the subframe, easier and less heavy
also best to replace the brake line especially if you have abs (6 line).

another tip that might help to pull the bushes we did proper home styleee, did work good tho,

get a long stud about fore arms length, feed it through the bush whole, say trailing arm and attach a 10 - 12 mm socket on one end followed by a nut for the stud and opposite side use a a 30 32 mm socket followed by a nut, you can/should add some spacers between the nut and sockets to protect the sockets from damage and tighten up the nuts on both ends keeping the sockets tight, and then simply wind up the small side socket (10 12 mm side) and watch the bush slide out slowly into the 30 32mm sockey... seems hard, time consuming, sounds dumb lol but its quite easy if your useful with some home made tools,


used this method for the subframe bush, but placed it in the vice.

you can also use the same method as a puller to place the bush in place.

[android]

Slightly off topic.

After reading all this I decided to pay someone to do it. They charged 120 notes to do both rear bushes .

Before they were done, the car had a lovely smooth ride, it just felt wayward if I went around a corner fast.

Now, the car corners very well, but the straight and level ride is poor. The car feels like its jiggling around. Looking at a speck of bird poo on the window, against the car in front, it goes straight, then bobs around every five seconds or so.

I had a wheel bearing done at the same time, so it could be just the tracking.

It's a shame, this was the first suspension work ever done on the car, so I hope it's not messed up for good.

I asked them to use genuine BMW bushes by the way, but won't know if they have without taking them out again. I should perhapd have bought them myself, and left them on the seat.

Anyone got any clues?