So this weekend I've been doing a suspension setup on an e46 BMW 330. Koni double adjustables with TC Kline custom built aluminum threaded perch housings rebult with stock springs (needs to be SCCA D Stock legal) All I need to say is subaru owners don't know how good thye have it. The rears took about 20 minutes. Just drop the rear control arm, pull one bolt and the thing falls out. The spring is being held by the tension of the control arm. The fronts have stock removable lower spring perches (wth? subarus/toyotats/japanese etc are all welded one piece strut bodies) so we had to figure out that you just had to whack them with a mallet until they fell off. The springs need to be compressed to the nth degree, moving compressors around, then pounding them off with a mallet when rebuilt. The studs on the top hat are not threaded into the hat, OH NO THAT WOULD BE TOO EASY. they are apparently just pounded in there by an asmatic midget child with a plastic toy hammer and they all fell out. I had to rig up a way to re pound all of them in using a prybar then reassemble the strut without any of the air tools vibrating the things out again. Way too much work. On top of all of this I had to use a rotary grinder DIRECTLY ON THE ALUMINUM THREADS of the strut to remove the top inch or so of threads then cut notches into the struts so they would accept the lower spring perch. I really didnt want to **** up these $1k housings in front of the owner so I had to go slow and accurate, but man, that was a little nerve wracking (for him i guess). So all in all I had to fix two engineering problems, rebuild the struts four times, modify the housings, tear apart a set of stock struts, reattach studs to the worlds worst designed top hats, and work with crappy, crappy autozone powerbuilt spring compressors. I also got to find out that BMW 3 series suspensions have absolutely no camber or caster adjustment whatsoever, just tie rods to set toe. I hope nobody hits a curb since they have no eccentric bolts, just ONE BOLT holding the strut tot he hub by clamping the hub around it like a hose clamp. Needless to say, I'm not rushing to the BMW dealership. I know this post probably has no point but I really have to vent. I could have done oh, about 4 subarus in the same amount of time. Subaru strut assemblies might not make the car turn the best but my god are they easy to work on compared to what other people have.
what stank was test driving the car and having it clunk like it was dying only to discover we hadn't installed the super secret koni washer (in with a gigantic bag of hardware, not mentioned in any instructions anywhere) so we drove it back, took everything apart and reassembled it again.
Nobody ever designs cars to be worked on these days. They are cleverly packaged and they go together right at thefactory, but God help you if you want to work on them. Dropping engines to change spark plugs? WTF?!
