The E30 328i BMW Gets Treated To BC Coilovers. Done a lot if research into which suspension set up to go for? Christian Freed who fitted a V8 to his E30 recently suggested the BC coilovers which he has fitted in his E30. You can see from this video that his V8 Beemer drifts with little effort and sounds the Nuts….
Googled BC coilovers & they seemed to be the best value for money, with many great reviews about them! The BC BR Series coilovers looked the part and come with:
- Camber Adjustable Top Mounts (Front)
- Aluminium Top Plates
- Bearing Mounted Upper Front Spring Platform
- 30 Way Adjustable Damping (Rebound/Compression)
- Adjustable Spring Platforms
- Pillowball (Rose Joint) Upper Mounts, Front & Rear
Fitting the Rear shocks and springs was a pretty straight forward job, done this outside in the sunshine and didn’t take long to do. For the fronts I wanted to get it on the ramp.
After Checking the suspension mounts and bushes it was obvious I would be needing some heavy duty bushes sooner rather then later…..
Fitting the front coilovers is a lot more involved. The hub on the E30 is Part of the Strut (McPherson Unit). After removing the Strut assembly from the Bimmer, I removed the springs and shocks. I could now see how bad the O/S shock was, It had no fluid in it and the piston rod had no resistance what so ever, just dropping inside the shock body. (Normally it would be very hard to push it in by hand).
No wonder my Bimmer was handling so bad. Also removed the brake discs and dust covers. All I had to do now was fit the Coilovers to the Hubs…..
After reading through the Instructions, which were not very good English (from Taiwan)….in fact it looked like Yoda had written it…..
This product has one year guarentee; please getting a certificate from saleman when purchase the shock absorber…..
We will not return unless it is miss in assembling…
Installer must wear glove avoid injuring when installing….
This document is prohibited from copy of some according to the law…….
This did make me chuckle but with the diagrams it was easy enough to work out. Basically after you have the strut stripped down with the Shock absorber removed, you have to cut the strut housing 50mm up from the bottom. So I Measured the struts and cut them, no going back now!!
Next clean up the hub so that its ready for welding. Then tap or in this case whack the Hubs onto the lovely BC coilys. Do a few spot welds and then seam weld the BC Coilover to the E30 Hub. I added some extra welding just to make sure it was not going anywhere.
When the welds cool down I sprayed the welding with some paint to prevent rusting. Then it was a case of refitting the coilovers to the E30. After fitting the BC`s, I didn’t bother adjusting the height or the springs or pre loading the springs. I just tightened the Locking collars for the ride height and spring platforms, for now.
Time was getting on, so I just left the settings as they were out of the box. This had raised the front ride height by 3 Inches and the back was pretty much how it was before I fitted the Coilovers. I decided to leave it for the time been as It was a long day and the Rainstorms had finally arrived!
Driving home it felt so much better. Well that wouldn’t of been too hard as the Bimmer had been hobbling around on 3 shocks for the past couple weeks! It transformed the feel of the car, feeling much, much firmer, maybe a little too hard for the road??
The Beemer felt very stiff now, came to the 1st round about and the Beemer was under steering worse then ever, gave it some gas and the back end started coming around. The roads were very slippy due to the rain after the heat wave we have had over the past 2 weeks, which didn’t help matters.
The front brakes were locking up very easy and the back wheels were spinning up with no effort. Pulled over, popped the bonnet and slackened of the front adjusters to soften the shocks on the front. This made the front feel a lot better but I still needed to get the front ride height down by at least 3 Inches before fine tuning.
Over all I’m very pleased with the Quality, looks and adjustability of the BC Coilovers. I need to get them set up as soon as, to get the full benefits from these bad boys! This will most definitely make drifting in the Beemer a lot easier then my last outing at King Of The Ring.
The 3rd Chapter at King Of The Ring was a lot of fun even though I wasn’t getting very sideways due to severe Under steer and shite handbrake. The only way to get the back out was by doing a Clutch kick which would just put me into a spin with Snap Over steer…..but No excuses, I thought I would of done better 😉
The Top 3 of King Of The Ring the 3rd Chapter were: (Still waiting for official results)
- Richard Francis in a BMW (I think)??
- Someone in a Scooby??
- Jodie Rasburn in the White E30 BMW from South end (Didn’t realise but bought her Welded diff from her dad on eBay last month)
Next King Of The Ring will be on Sept the 7th at Essex Arena. Cant wait, the Beemer Will be proper side ways this time (F`ing better be) and should, with no wheels, tools and Jack in the boot and some tweaking to the BC Coilovers be a lot more predictable…… 😉
Noise or in my case lack off noise, would need sorting too. I’m gonna have to make some straight through pipes up for drifting…. 😉