It's been a while since I've posted anything of great significance on this thread, I've just been enjoying the car and keeping it maintained. It had a full set of new MPS4S tyres fitted back in January, had an annual oil service carried out and a scheduled brake fluid change at the local indy.
New tyres going on, and pretty even wear across all four. The fronts had done about 40k and still had a bit of life left in them but had been on the car since 2019 so just bit the bullet and replaced them all. Rears went on two years ago and had done 20k.
A few months back I started to get a clunking noise coming from the front passenger side, I thought 45k miles on the B14's might have taken its toll on some of the bushes so set about locating the noisy one. As soon as I jacked the car up I found the culprit... a snapped spring
I had noticed I'd started getting a bit more rubbing on that corner when I had a heavier passenger sat in the car and thought it might have been down to the fresh set of tyres. I was tempted to raise the car a bit for a more grown up appearance (I'm knocking on a bit now) but didn't fancy my luck given the state of the threaded sleeves. They really haven't held up well to daily use so would need to be replaced. I contacted Bilstein for a price on a full set of springs and rear threaded sleeves. The biggest issue was the 6-8 week lead time on them all, I have use of the m3 while I've got the F31 in the garage but I don't want to daily it in all conditions for that long.
In the end I decided to go with the B12 kit, I already had the B8 rear shocks which are still fine. I just had to buy the two matching B8 fronts and a set of Eibach pro springs. This gives me a fixed set up and a properly coated set of front shocks which should hold up much better to the elements than the B14's did.
Stupidly I sold my original suspension with all of the spring seat rubbers & rear cups thinking I wouldn't reuse them anyway so I had to buy some more of those.
Once I had the parts together it was into the garage to be stripped down
The offending strut assembly removed & in the vice. You can see how corroded the shock body is, the galvanised coating hasn't lasted well at all compared to the rears which still look pretty good despite the odd stone chip
I don't think the person who installed the fronts last time around knew what a torque wrench was because some of the bolts were mental tight, especially on the rear. I removed one of the strut top bolts on the front and it snapped straight away, so that needed drilling and tapping out with a cheap set of easy outs & taps that saved the day
New strut built up, ready to install
Rears are pretty straight forward apart from the incredibly tight bolts that I had to fight out. You can see the state of the threaded adjustment sleeves here.
Eibach spring fitted with new rubbers & cups, I could do with a new set of bump stops for the rears, they were trimmed as per the installation instructions for the B14's.
It definitely doesn't look as aggressive being slightly higher, and it's taken me a month or so to get used to it but it looks more subtle and a bit less 'modified' which as I clock up the years I want to move away from. Not that I don't like how it looked, just sometimes felt a bit boy racer for my age
After a few hundred miles
It definitely didn't feel as dynamic as it did on the coilovers but a fresh four wheel alignment helped with that, and they are slightly more compliant than the coilovers were which is a bonus.
