[gippy]

EDIT: thought i'd update this as i've explored the cars handling now after about 150 miles.

- at high speed on motorways i actually get road texture coming through the wheel. Probably because of the considerably stiffer dampers not giving way much on small road surface imperfections on the motorway. Its not annoying, it's kind of nice that the steering wheel rim has come alive a tiny bit.

- the corner corners flatter, considerably flatter. Steering response is immediate, whereas before i'd steer and it felt like there was a massive lag between input, through to response - as if there was a layer of tofu between myself and the tyres - all of that is gone. Transitioning left to right is far more direct and satisying.

- under hard braking from 100mph+ the diving has practically gone. A huge transformation here.

- there isn't more grip, necessarily. But because of that immediacy in the response its so much more confidence experience, i don't have that floaty feeling anymore. I don't have to account for the 'tofu float' in my inputs anymore. At Donington that's literally what i was having to do, and i feel if i took the car back there now i'm sure it'll be a more enjoyable experience.

- over speedbumps at very low speed, the rear does bounce now. Maybe i do need the stiffer rear springs to get that Farkle flat ride....i'll probably experiment with that next year.





Well after 4 days of toil, the car finally hit the ground and i took it for a test drive. Still needs alignment doing, although ISTA does not list replacing dampers/springs as a reason for alignment - but i'm curious to get it checked anyway. I've driven about 15 miles so far in total and the difference is remarkable over bumps. It finally feels a bit more like a sports car in terms of ride quality and composure, how it should have left the factory.

With my stock suspension (M-sport), every hard bump especially at low speed would be accompanied with a 'harshness' afterward, take for example going over a speed bump: it would 'crash' on the rebound. Difficult to explain without knowing exactly what was going on with the spring and damper, i wish i had data to explain it. Now with potholes and bumps at low speed that crashiness is gone. The car goes up once to negotiate the speed bump, down once, and instantly back to normal. There's just those 2 phases to the motion, rather than about 4 or 5. If i'd encountered 2 large bumps in succession before, the harshness would transmit through the cabin as it still felt like it was dealing with the first bump with no remaining travel to smooth the 2nd one - Now it deals with both individually, and instantly, smoothing over each of them. It just feels like the damper is dealing with everything at 20x the rate, and restoring control immediately.

The other thing i couldn't stand with the stock setup was coming to a halt holding onto the brake i.e. i don't normally bother easing off the pedal coming to a stop, i'm lazy. But in this car i'd often find myself controlling the stop to come to a smooth stop (y'no like in your driving test), because the characteristics were so unpleasant - as it stopped it'd pitch down at the nose then wobble back up like a boat, and i could swear that if someone was behind me on the road they'd probably see that rocking motion. Truly awful.
Well - that's now gone. I come to a red light, there's virtually no pitch (if it was '100% pitch' before its maybe 5% now) and the car instantly settles at full stop. Amazing.


It now feels a good step closer to the Type R in terms of pitch composure - and i actually feel like i have proper dampers now, that are doing a job of damping and rebounding properly. It's mad how bad the stock ones are, i'm surprised more people don't do this mod!

I cannot say if it's made much difference in terms of raw handling through corners - i'll have to take it back to the track for a test, but i'm not expecting much because fundamentally the ARB's need swapping to something stiffer to get rid of the body roll.

No difference detected in terms of steering feel, it's still as numb as ever. I don't think its as stiff as others have said on forum posts, feels about right to me if you're looking for a significant step up. It is a lot firmer, definitely, but it's so much better than stock when handling bumps. The only time you'd really notice the firmness is over a road with continuous bumps, a badly cobbled road for example, it's stiffness really shows up there.

As i'm ultimately looking to slowly turn this into more of a track weapon over the next 12 months (and hopefully an M4C beater), the next mods will be the H&R sway bar kit, and changing all the bushes to solid/poly
However i'm so happy with how this mod has turned out, for under £1k in total (including tooling). Was worth every penny, and i'm sure going over the kerbs at Donington now will be a much more pleasant experience without upsetting the car - especially for example on the exit of old hairpin.

There's a small part of me that wishes i'd spent another £500 and got the B16 kit, mainly to experiment with the level of damping............but then i think. Jeez £500! I'd get better value spending that on the aforementioned mods.

My thanks to kies motorsport b16 video, FaRKle! and BMW DIY Guy - without these 3 videos, the task would have been impossible. Invaluable information and there's no way i would have attempted it myself without those guides.
I cross referenced all their vids against ISTA, double checked the torque numbers for everything, and made my own notes, so i was prepared. At times i did wonder whether it was worth my time, but i guess now i've done it myself once and know what to do, it would be easily possible to do it all in a day now. Plus there's a glowing sense of achievement. In a way it's like playing with a giant mecanno set, but with dire consequences for getting it wrong!

Finally, i think its worth adding a few more notes to those video guides, to help anyone else who wants to DIY it, some of which i'd already mentioned on DIYGuy's B16 thread, but i'll add them on here:

general tips:
- it is definitely worth getting the more expensive spring compressor kit, those ones which are about £80. The £25 set i bought did the job.....but they actually won't fit on the bilstein springs at the front, there simply isn't enough of a gap in between the coils. even with the BMW springs i had to tighten the tools shaft all the way until both ends were touching, yet the top mount still popped off due to some tension (nothing dramatic though, just made a loud popping noise as the nut came out).

- it is worth getting someone to help. Doing it on my own, with my feeble strength, i'd say it added a fair amount of time to the job, whilst also having to contort my body in all kinds of ways.

- if you're not intending to do further spring/damper replacements in the future, and have never done the job before, i'd suggest it's worth paying your trusted indy to do the job instead. Just not worth the time - for me it was more of a learning experience as i know in the future i'll be doing this job in the future on other cars.

- adjusting the ride height is a case of trial and error - i went too conservative with about 22 threads showing front and rear, and the car is sat about 10-15mm higher than stock. So i'd say start at 15 threads and go from there - clearly depends on the car though.

- a quickjack would make life a lot easier. If you're tracking your car and regularly changing pads, wheels, springs, and whatever else, the £1k investment is totally worth it in the long run. Infact i'd go further and say you might as well spend £1.5k and get a 2 post car lifter if you have garage space.

tips for front:

- forget the BMW way/trying to pull the strut out top-end first under the wheelarch - on my car at least, there wasn't anywhere near enough clearance to even try and push down on the strut. The official BMW way is to actually unbolt the LCA and steering rod from the entire wheel assembly, which would then make the 'top-end first' method possible.
I managed one side not having to unbolt anything connected to the hub (Swivel bearing as BMW calls it), however on the other side it looked like if i'd pushed down anymore it would have done damage to the track rod, so i played it safe and ended up unbolting the track rod to allow me to push down hard enough on the LCA's and hub to get the bottom of the strut out the knuckle, and then it's plain sailing. This needs tightening back to 175nm, and you'd need a second person to hold the steering as you do it.

- double check that the strut has been pushed all the way down through the knuckle....i only realised after dropping the car back to the ground that one side was 20mm higher than the other. Do this before putting everything back on and tightening!

- there's no need to compress the bilstein springs when putting the top mount back on the strut. Firstly, there's hardly any gap big enough for my compressor to have fit in between so wasn't even an option - secondly, you can (as i did) just set the collars low to begin with, put the top mount back on, screw on the nut, then adjust the collar. This saves having to mess about with spring compressors again or having difficulty pushing the top mount down so there's enough thread for the nut.

Rear
- double check that with the spring perch at the rear, that you've not forgotten to put the thin blue plastic disc in between the spring and ring adjuster.....as i did. And ended up spending 40 mins redoing the entire exercise!

- when jacking up the camber arm to slot the hub bolt back in, be EXTRA careful, as it's easy to start squishing the rubber ball joint. I noticed i'd started to do it, luckily stopped in time (and Farkle did mention it in his video, listen carefully to his every word!). The best way is to push on the camber arm forwards, to the front of the car, as you're raising it (i used a leg....or get someone to do it!) to ensure it clears the hub.

- getting those bolts in are tricky, i found that by wedging a wrench in between the damper and hub rubber joint, you could lever against the bottom of the damper to align it. Again this would be a lot easier with 2 people, but once you've cracked the technique it's actually quite quick to do.

Required tools (for my fellow Brits..)

in addition to the usual requirements of a full array of spanners, hex keys, star sockets and so on, i had to buy the below:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/19mm-Impa...72.m2749.l2649

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Welzh-Wer...72.m2749.l2649

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Sabrecut-...72.m2749.l2649

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/A-15GOTH-...72.m2749.l2649

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Coil-Spri...72.m2749.l2649

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1-2-Squar...72.m2749.l2649

https://www.screwfix.com/p/irwin-met...questid=729617