Full suspension refresh

With the engine sorted and most of the cosmetic bits all sorted I wanted to give the suspension a big going over next. The car was on its original front struts so quite ”boat like’ when cornering haha. Looking under the front, most of the bushes and ball joints looked fairly decent but a boot had split on the front left wishbone and and the drop links looked a little worse for wear so I decided to just do absolutely everything!

New Febi wishbones ordered, new drop links, new tie rod ends, new anti roll bar bushes, Febi control arm bushes, new Bilstein B4 OEM shocks and H&R sports springs which give a gentle 35mm drop. E30’s ride very high with the stock setup so I wanted a slightly more aggressive stance but more OEM+ than slammed haha!

First up was to strip the old wishbones, tie rod ends, drop links, anti-rollbar bushes and control arm bushes. I had heard how hard it it is to remove control arm bushes from the mounts so I found some Febi Bilsten ones which cam as a complete unit. Cracking the control arms from the struts took some doing, I ended up getting a splitter tool which did the job after a lot of awkward angled hammer wanging!

Next up was remove the front struts, dismantle (it doesn’t matter how many struts I dismantle I still feel like Im working on an unexploded bomb when Im taking the top hat off and the springs are compressed haha!.

With the struts in pieces I nipped them to a local motorbike restoration shop who shot blasted and powder coated them for me. A quick before and after shot with the first one done and rebuilt.

Struts back in and it was add the wishbones back in (I can not believe how had it was to fit the rear bushes, I had to build a clamp out of two 18 inch bolts and some plated steel driven by the impact gun!), tie rod ends bak in and the drop links then bolt everything up. Looks a lot better than the before picture further up.

The back was much easier thankfully, tricky to do on my own but with the help of the spring compressors and a couple of jacks I got it done.

I was very relieved when I dropped the car back down and it settled, it looked absolutely perfect, exactly the stance I wanted, not slammed, just filling the arches nicely and looking a little more aggressive.

I can’t believe how fresh it felt on the test drive, I mean the shocks that were in had just celebrated their 33rd birthday so its no surprise really, but still… tight but still very comfortable. The parts bin is below!