[c18]

Hey guys,

A buddy of mine has a 2018 F30 340i,
He is running H&R sports for the springs and has a set of 18' apex arc-8s

The car has a really light feeling to the steering from factory and I wanted to see if anyone has a good setup for something a little tighter and less floaty.

[gameson]

Monoballs millway or VAC

[johnung]

Originally Posted by c18

Hey guys,

A buddy of mine has a 2018 F30 340i,
He is running H&R sports for the springs and has a set of 18' apex arc-8s

The car has a really light feeling to the steering from factory and I wanted to see if anyone has a good setup for something a little tighter and less floaty.

The vague F30 steering is due to stock front control arm bushings with too much play in them. There is also excess flex in the front chassis.

1) Replace the Front Upper Control Arms with VAC monoball control arms. If you can afford it it also helps to replace the Lower Control Arms. You can also do the lowers later.

FOR F30 RWD

https://www.kiesmotorsports.com/prod...8;_ss=r?aff=22

FOR F30 XDRIVE

https://www.kiesmotorsports.com/prod...8;_ss=r?aff=22

2) install a front strut tower brake to eliminate chassis flex when you enter turns

https://www.kiesmotorsports.com/prod...8;_ss=r?aff=22

Installation Video

[Watsey]

As per johnung's reply, the lack of steering feel is caused by the large / soft / oil-filled isolation bushes where the radius arms are attached to the chassis. They rob steering feel and control.

Monoballs are an option but poly bushes are also a very effective and long-lasting solution.

I've run Superpro bushes in these arms for several years and they instantly created a huge improvement in steering precision and responsiveness.

You'd need to check for the correct part but they look like this :

https://www.superproeurope.com/produ...ehicleid=12409

[eleven11]

Originally Posted by Watsey

As per @[johnung]
Monoballs are an option but poly bushes are also a very effective and long-lasting solution.
https://www.superproeurope.com/produ...ehicleid=12409

To add to the conversation, I understand that the NVH is typically higher in a poly setup (vs stock or monoballs), correct?

[johnung]

Originally Posted by eleven11

To add to the conversation, I understand that the NVH is typically higher in a poly setup (vs stock or monoballs), correct?

Higher Noise Vibration Harshness transmitted to the cabin have always been the problem with replacing stock bushings with firmer, more track type bushings. The big advantage of monoball bushings is the tighter bushing tolerances that tighten up the steering while the ease of movement in other directions prevents creation & transmission of NVH to the cabin.

[Watsey]

Originally Posted by eleven11

To add to the conversation, I understand that the NVH is typically higher in a poly setup (vs stock or monoballs), correct?

That's not how I'd view things.

In my opinion, in terms of increased NVH :

OEM
Poly (street compound, i.e. 80-90 duro )
Monoballs

[gameson]

Originally Posted by Watsey

That's not how I'd view things.

In my opinion, in terms of increased NVH :

OEM
Poly (street compound, i.e. 80-90 duro )
Monoballs

OEM being the quieter and monoballs being the noisy?

Originally Posted by johnung

The vague F30 steering is due to stock front control arm bushings with too much play in them. There is also excess flex in the front chassis.

1) Replace the Front Upper Control Arms with VAC monoball control arms. If you can afford it it also helps to replace the Lower Control Arms. You can also do the lowers later.

FOR F30 RWD

https://www.kiesmotorsports.com/prod...0&_ss=r?aff=22

FOR F30 XDRIVE

https://www.kiesmotorsports.com/prod...0&_ss=r?aff=22

2) install a front strut tower brake to eliminate chassis flex when you enter turns

https://www.kiesmotorsports.com/prod...9&_ss=r?aff=22

Installation Video

Where else to buy vac monoballs beside from vac itself and kies? I google and can’t find any besides the two sources

[vcx]

I recently installed the VAC upper and lower arms monobal, and the difference in steering feel is impressive. I would recommand this upgrade 100%. The increase in NVH is really marginal, and just add to the more direct and connected experience IMO.

[pauli18c]

Originally Posted by Watsey

That's not how I'd view things.

In my opinion, in terms of increased NVH :

OEM
Poly (street compound, i.e. 80-90 duro )
Monoballs

I would have to agree with this as Poly still has some give to it where monoballs are more or less a solid mount

[pauli18c]

Originally Posted by gameson

OEM being the quieter and monoballs being the noisy?



Where else to buy vac monoballs beside from vac itself and kies? I google and can’t find any besides the two sources

You can try Millway monoballs as well

[johnung]

Originally Posted by vcx

I recently installed the VAC upper and lower arms monobal, and the difference in steering feel is impressive. I would recommand this upgrade 100%. The increase in NVH is really marginal, and just add to the more direct and connected experience IMO.

Yes, I agree. When people talk about NVH (Noise Vibration Harshness), it is something that is transmitted to the cabin so that the occupants can all feel it.

What you are describing is the same thing that I felt after installing the VAC monoball control arms. It's increased road feel that is transmitted to the driver's hands through the steering wheel. So the steering goes from feeling vague and numb, to there being actual road feel, like a fine European sports sedan is supposed to have.

I hear people with E-Series cars always complain when they drive an F-Series about the steering having no feel. I only test drove an E-Series once a few years ago but I'd say that the VAC monoballs make the F-Series steering feel more like the E-Series

[BMWILUVU]

I have a new set of Turner monoball I can sell you. The deflections associated with cushy control arm bushings can be seen and measured. The deflections associated with engine bay flex specifically what is remedied by a traditional strut tower brace is near imperceptible especially from testing done driving hard on fast turns on a racetrack on N55s. The LCI chassis is even slightly stiffer with added weld points and should definitely not need a strut tower brace.

[johnung]

Originally Posted by gameson

OEM being the quieter and monoballs being the noisy?

Where else to buy vac monoballs beside from vac itself and kies? I google and can’t find any besides the two sources

VAC and Kies Motorsports are the only two sources that I know of. VAC in Philadelphia batch manufactures them on a $750k CNC so they can be out of stock at times. And VAC charges shipping.

It's way too expensive to setup and operate a complex CNC so it would be incredibly expensive to make just one unit. So a batch always means hours of setup and then operating a CNC to manufacture a part for the rest of the day, sometimes 2 or 3 days in a row, before breaking it all down and setting it up to manufacture a different piece.

It is really cool to watch. A solid slice of aluminum rod goes into the machine booth and is held at specific points. Gallons of cutting fluid spray on it while a dozen different high speed cutting heads shape it in an extremely precise order. Tolerances are repeatable down to a thousandth of an inch. Sometimes the process is so complex that only a handful can be made per hour.

The final part often looks so pristine and simple that it beguiles the engineering that went into the design, and into the design of the CNC manufacturing process itself. It takes many years of experience and a three dimensional eye to determine the order, direction and speed of each of a dozen or more cutting tools. There are literally a thousand variables and choices that are possible. It's pretty cool to see the parts that were screwed up during the prototype process and hear how adjustments were determined and made. It can go from a part that took 30 minutes and looks terrible, to a pristine part that took 12 minutes. But that could take days of an expert engineers time to accomplish.

I've been in many CNC shops that can be quite different. It all comes down to the quality of the engineers. I've had some shops proudly hand me an example of their work, that would never be up to the quality standards of top shops.

Kies Motorsports in NJ has a retailer agreement with VAC so they purchase and stock inventory. Kies does not charge shipping.

I frequently recommend Kies because their Customer Service is excellent. (Something rare these days) I never have to be concerned that someone who I was trying to help out with a recommendation is not going to be satisfied.

Here are the links to the F30 VAC Monoball control arms.

FOR F30 RWD:
https://www.kiesmotorsports.com/prod...8;_ss=r?aff=22

FOR F30 XDRIVE:
https://www.kiesmotorsports.com/prod...8;_ss=r?aff=22

Hope this helps!

[pauli18c]

Originally Posted by johnung

VAC and Kies Motorsports are the only two sources that I know of. VAC in Philadelphia batch manufactures them on a $750k CNC so they can be out of stock at times. And VAC charges shipping.

It's way too expensive to setup and operate a complex CNC so it would be incredibly expensive to make just one unit. So a batch always means hours of setup and then operating a CNC to manufacture a part for the rest of the day, sometimes 2 or 3 days in a row, before breaking it all down and setting it up to manufacture a different piece.

It is really cool to watch. A solid slice of aluminum rod goes into the machine booth and is held at specific points. Gallons of cutting fluid spray on it while a dozen different high speed cutting heads shape it in an extremely precise order. Tolerances are repeatable down to a thousandth of an inch. Sometimes the process is so complex that only a handful can be made per hour.

The final part often looks so pristine and simple that it beguiles the engineering that went into the design, and into the design of the CNC manufacturing process itself. It takes many years of experience and a three dimensional eye to determine the order, direction and speed of each of a dozen or more cutting tools. There are literally a thousand variables and choices that are possible. It's pretty cool to see the parts that were screwed up during the prototype process and hear how adjustments were determined and made. It can go from a part that took 30 minutes and looks terrible, to a pristine part that took 12 minutes. But that could take days of an expert engineers time to accomplish.

I've been in many CNC shops that can be quite different. It all comes down to the quality of the engineers. I've had some shops proudly hand me an example of their work, that would never be up to the quality standards of top shops.

Kies Motorsports in NJ has a retailer agreement with VAC so they purchase and stock inventory. Kies does not charge shipping.

I frequently recommend Kies because their Customer Service is excellent. (Something rare these days) I never have to be concerned that someone who I was trying to help out with a recommendation is not going to be satisfied.

Here are the links to the F30 VAC Monoball control arms.

FOR F30 RWD:
https://www.kiesmotorsports.com/prod...3&_ss=r?aff=22

FOR F30 XDRIVE:
https://www.kiesmotorsports.com/prod...3&_ss=r?aff=22

Hope this helps!

Man, I'm going to have you write my resume some day. You make my job sound so interesting (part designer, mold maker, tool programming)

[gameson]

Originally Posted by pauli18c

You can try Millway monoballs as well

I already said millway, check the first reply of this thread

[johnung]

Originally Posted by pauli18c

Man, I'm going to have you write my resume some day. You make my job sound so interesting (part designer, mold maker, tool programming)

That stuff that you do is exciting! Very cool to create and solve puzzles when they come up, etc. And to interact about it with others too! You wouldn't do it if there wasn't fun/satisfaction in it.

I have a Science/R&D background and I've been lucky to have spent most of my career out in the field, meeting, working with, and learning from a lot of very smart people. Always learning new stuff is fun!

My passion for cars has been my hobby since I was 16. Even did it as a business for a time until I made more money by following other passions. Researching, choosing and modding your own car, getting it just the way that you envisioned it, is so much freakin fun!

When I was younger and single, I used to shoot the shit and drink beer in someone's garage with my local car club buddies. Now with social media, I get to have car buddies all over the world.

My wife will say "What are you doing?" as if she's going to get me admit to wasting time on my phone watching porn or something. Instead it's more like, "I'm trying to solve a problem. Been talking with guys in Hawaii, California, Baltimore, UK, Amsterdam and Germany." She seems disappointed, like she'd rather hear that I was watching porn. Well maybe not that!

It's a shame that we don't all get to crack open a few beers though. But every time that I do that I'm likely to post something stupid anyway. Take care!

[johnung]

It's easy to make that (incorrect) assumption from looking at a photograph. If one holds a VAC monoball bushing in their hand, it's easier to understand. The beauty of the monoball design is that it replaces the big sloshy gaps inside the stock bushing with really tight tolerances that make the steering so precise.

A stiffer polyurethane or other race type bushing does a similar thing. By tightening things up at the center of the bushing, it tightens up steering. But there are severe drawbacks to this very old technology.

But roads are not perfect. Every road imperfection, rough patch, pothole, highway seam, etc. acts on the bushing from all sorts of other directions. This is the source of what people call NVH- Noise, Vibration, and Harshness that is transmitted to the people in the cabin.

This is where an old technology race bushing and a new technology monoball bushing greatly differ.

If one grabs an old style poly type race bushing and tries to move it by hand, it is stiff and non-compliant in every direction, not just the directions that it needs to be for steering. This is why NVH is transmitted from road imperfections directly to the cabin occupants. To track guys, NVH is very low on their priority list. They don't care how rough or loud their car rides on the track. But in a street daily driver, eliminating NVH is a top priority.

If one grabs a VAC monoball bushing and tries to move it by hand, it is stiff and non-compliant in just the directions that it needs to be for steering, how it's bolted onto the frame. But in all of the other directions it just moves effortlessly. The monoball acts as a barrier to NVH from a rough road. When the road throws forces from various directions at a monoball, it just deflects/swats them away. They never reach the cabin occupants. The monoball is like the Dikembe Mutumbo of suspensions.

From the very positive experience that I have had with the VAC monoball bushings, it baffles me how anyone can claim that monoballs increase NVH over the stock bushings. (Remember that I'm talking about actual NVH to all of the cabin occupants, not the nice road feel to the driver's hands through the steering wheel.)

The only explanations that I have are:

1) that someone has no actual first hand experience with monoballs on their car, but is making incorrect assumptions from looking at photos or reading and passing along incorrect comments/descriptions. That's easy to do without first hand experience.

2) or that someone has had a poor experience with another brand of monoball. Monoballs are not generic. Every implementation and design is unique. All of my experience is with VAC monoballs. They have been great for me and I've heard great feedback from guys who followed my recommendation and installed them on their cars.

About 2.5 years ago I read another BimmerPost member talk about the successful beta testing he was doing on his car with VAC monoballs. I was intrigued, especially when I learned that they were within driving distance. I called up VAC and had an excellent discussion. They had a production manufacturing run scheduled and invited me over to watch. It was very cool. Like I said, I have been in many CNC shops with projects that I have worked on.

At one point the lead design engineer had one of his monoballs and new Lemforder Upper Control Arm on a shop bench. I wish that I had it on video. He proceeded to go through the design considerations for exactly why he designed the VAC monoball the way that he did. And he also went through competitors designs, what they had done, what there downsides were, and why he had purposely not done his design that way. Things like tolerances, angles, reliability, resistance to wear, resistance to dirt infiltration, car alignment issues, compatibility with XDrive, etc all came up in discussion.

Like I said, I wish that I had it all on video. It was a hands-on engineering primer on monoball bushing design.

But when I hear guys rip monoballs, I tend to think that they must be mistakenly assuming that monoballs are generic items, and they may have had a poor experience with one of the poor design implementations that was discussed that day a few years ago.

A buddy of mine bought a brand new M car. He had previous experience testing various monoballs. One of the things on his mod list was to replace the M bushings in his suspension, which were designed many years ago with technology that is now considered old. He saw an advantage to tracking his car with monoball bushings over stock M bushings.

Hope this helps!

[sdbwisc]

I did the strut bar brace, made a big difference. Even the GF noticed and she's not a car person lol. I plan on doing the VAC control arms next. Start out small.

[FastFrog]

Very informative thread, thanks to its knowledgeable contributors. Before I read all this, I assumed that the poor steering feedback on my F30 was caused by the electric steering.
I had a E9x before the F30, which was a night and day difference in favor of the former from a steering feel standpoint, as many know. It had an hydraulic steering, which I believed was the cause of that. But did it also benefit from firmer control arm bushings other better steering parts, from that perspective?

[johnung]

Originally Posted by sdbwisc

I did the strut bar brace, made a big difference. Even the GF noticed and she's not a car person lol. I plan on doing the VAC control arms next. Start out small.

Where did you get your strut brace? I've seen that style design but not that brand on it.

If you like the improvement from the strut brace, you will be amazed if you upgrade your Upper Control Arms to the VACs. Steering is so much more precise with just the right amount of road feel. It's easily in the Top5 mods that I've done to my car.

Do the Uppers first if that's what you can afford right now. Lowers still improve steering but I'd guess about 50% as much improvement as you notice after doing the Uppers. It's that big stock bushing on the Upper control arm that's the biggest culprit to steering. See photo.

Labor is about 1-2 hours for one pair. Two pairs at the same time, maybe 2-3 hours

[sdbwisc]

Originally Posted by johnung

Where did you get your strut brace? I've seen that style design but not that brand on it.

If you like the improvement from the strut brace, you will be amazed if you upgrade your Upper Control Arms to the VACs. Steering is so much more precise with just the right amount of road feel. It's easily in the Top5 mods that I've done to my car.

Do the Uppers first if that's what you can afford right now. Lowers still improve steering but I'd guess about 50% as much improvement as you notice after doing the Uppers. It's that big stock bushing on the Upper control arm that's the biggest culprit to steering. See photo.

Labor is about 1-2 hours for one pair. Two pairs at the same time, maybe 2-3 hours

I will have to order those. I love feeling the improvements. I'm at 90k, time to do some suspension work.

https://rollsperformance.com/shop/ol...ut-tower-brace

This is where I got it. Good quality and price was good. No modification needed for the 340xi.. I also bought the sub frame plates for from and back on that site. Adding the control arms will tighten this up!