[blacksail337]

sorry in advance this a fairly long story

i have an 07 335xi with KW V1's

installed them myself, everything went fine, i've done several suspensions before

didn't get aligned after the install, because i was stupid, to the naked eye, it honestly looked fine, but no excuse, very stupid

rear toe was way outta wack, shredded the very inside of the back tires pretty quickly, also the car was slammed at the time

so i raised it up quite a bit, bought new rear tires and got an alignment, my mechanic said it went into spec fine.

6k miles later, it shredded the tires again . . . .

went back, got another alignment, my guy says all the adjustments are tight, but it was all out of spec again already as if i hit something real hard, which i didn't. def run on some pretty rough roads every day in my commute but i drive really carefully, have all the potholes memorized, ect

now only 2 weeks since that 2nd alignment EVERY bump i hit the rear end of the car is shaking and wiggling all over the road. feels really really loose AND i can already see the inside of the rear tires wearing a little tiny bit.

i bought the coils used here on the forums, were told they had 5k miles on em when i purchased, i've since put around 20k on them.

are they bad? or bent? does my car have some super messed up frame damage i don't know about? are some bushings shot with 57k miles on the car? i'm really lost and very very angry. is there any way i could have totally screwed something up in the install process to cause these symptoms? like i said not my first rodeo, trust my mechanic, used him for years but i will say the aftermarket world is far from his area of expertise.

ANY help/info/good locations for pushing a car off a cliff greatly appreciated

[cb1111]

No need to find a cliff - just drive it up to DC and leave it parked in S.E. No need to leave it unlocked, just leave enough room for the rollback to scoop it up.

Have you thought about returning the car to stock to see if the issue remains? Try posting this in our local forum - there are some pretty good suspension guys there.

I just posted in the mid-atlantic forum for you - you owe me a

[blacksail337]

haha awesome thanks!

i would have switched to stock by now but don't have any of it, the dampers were all blown and the springs just disappeared somehow.

one thing i forgot to add, before the coils i had put H&R race springs on the stock dampers for a short while until i saved up for coils, the car road like absolute crap but honestly handled fine, didn't do any of this swerve and fishtail business over bumps and as far as i know didn't wear the tires down unevenly at all.

ever since these KW's went on it's been a downward spiral

[Souljah]

have u checked to make sure you tightened every bolt? esp the one under the control arm..are the top hat bolt on tight? if you are fish tailing and handling like crap means something is loose back there, and or your shocks are blown...if you want to drive up to springfield tomorrow i can look at it for you...i used to work on suspension for people for money awhile back....i retired though because it was such a pita

[francisomar]

Sounds like your shocks are gone, I remember something similar when I was into the japanese cars, a Honda to be exact, everything looked ok but at last a replacement of the shocks solved the problem, good luck getting it fixed!

[Eric the Ricer]

Have you been "slammed" for the 25k on the coils? If not, how low are you compared to stock height right now?

[blacksail337]

I did go through and check all the bolts for tightness the first time it ate the tires off and everything seemed fine, but that has been quite awhile

The car was really low for around 15k miles, maybe that blew the rears, now I have it sitting maybe a 1/4 inch lower than like h&r sports, around 1.5" lower than stock i'd say

I actually work up at ft belvior so I'm not far from springfield, I'll pm ya my phone number, really appreciate it guys

[XYR03]

Something is def loose. It wouldn't be a bad idea to take them out and reinstall them again. I had that problem once when i hit a bump my rear jerks to the right or the left and it was due to miss alignment of the car (toe in or out in the rear). Seem like in your case your best bet is to go to the alignment shop and figure out which wheel is off and reinstall that shock and spring again. I'm very sorry to hear that your having such a serious issue. Please do not take suspension mods lightly since your whole car depends on it, it not like you can pull over to the side if something goes wrong.

[blacksail337]

yea sounds like this three day weekend is going to involve some wrenching! oh joy

[Tuner1984]

Have you thought about getting a camber kit? I know there expensive as hell for bmw, and not always needed, but if you want to save your tires you might need one. I know when I was into JDM's, once lowered and you didn't have a camber kit, the camber of the tires ate the tread up pretty fast. Usually from my experience I always put an aftermarket camber kit of my car, than took it somewhere to get it properly aligned.

[blacksail337]

yea a camber kit has crossed my mind, but as far as i understand it the way my tires keep wearing is from the toe adjustment getting way out of spec and not actually the camber

i don't think hondas have any camber adjustment in the rear stock, making the kits a must once lowered.

thanks for the suggestion though, who knows might end up having to try em

[blacksail337]

update!

my rear passenger side damper is covered in oil, so guess she's blown, would that alone be the reason for ALL my weird problems and whatnot?

also noticed something weird with the nuts that thread onto the bottom of the dampers

my passenger side one threads far enough up that there's about a half inch of threads sticking out through the nut, but my driver side one is only on far enough to be about flush, though they both seem tight, and the nuts on the top of the dampers inside the trunk are both dead even.

if that makes sense. . .

[zsapphire7]

you should check for correct torque specs on those...

[Express]

blown shock doesn't explain his shredded tires. is the spring seated correctly?

[The HACK]

Originally Posted by zsapphire7

you should check for correct torque specs on those...

BINGO. If I recall some of the suspension bolts need to be torqued up to 120ft-lbs. Good and tight just doesn't do it here.

[hatred]

yes you need to torque them to spec.

[blacksail337]

I imagine the blown shock is jumping and skipping and screwing the alignment up and makin the tires wear

The springs are both perched right

One of the bottom strut nut was a little stripped so I bought a new one and it tightened upp a lot farther up the stud BUT never stopped, I'm holding the strut and its not spinning but the nut never stops spinning, and this is on the good rear strut. . . . .

The bottom nut on the blown strut was a little loose, tightened it all the way

Emailed kw about getting a replacement damper

Thanks for all the help guys