Nut and bolt problem with front strut installation
 

I installed Bilstein Sport shocks and H&R Sport springs this afternoon on my 1995 Sport. When I was replacing the top bolt that is fastened with a nut to the king pin on the left strut (No. 5 here http://www.realoem.com/bmw/showparts...21&hg=31&fg=10), the bolt stopped moving with 3mm, give or take, to go. The nut is flush with the washer, but the bolt is stuck. I used an impact wrench to tighten it, and it didn't budge. Tried to remove the bolt, and it didn't move. (Yes, I held down the nut with a box wrench while doing both.) Then I tried again, and again, tighten and loosen. No luck. There was some Loc-tite on the bolt. As I had to leave (using my in-laws garage to do auto work), I tightened the nut with the impact wrench. The bolt didn't move a bit, even when I removed the box wrench.

At the moment, the front suspension is all together, and I took it out for test drive. The bolt doesn't look like it's going anywhere, but I'll check it again tomorrow.

In the meantime, any ideas as to what happened? Should I take it into a garage and have them remove the bolt? Anything that I should try myself?

The rest of the installation was completed, except for this bolt.

P.S. Thanks to andyman for his instructions in the Knowledge Base, very helpful. I'll add some comments from my experience, probably in this thread to keep the thread alive.

Whoops, here's that link

http://www.realoem.com/bmw/showparts...21&hg=31&fg=10

Checked this morning, bolt is still there.

Car looks much better. The rear shocks were blown when I bought the car, so the car has had the tucked looked in the back for a while. In the front, I was able to slip three fingers in the well before the new springs. It's only a finger-and-a-half now, giving the car a very slightly raked look. There wasn't much of a difference between the H&R Sports and the OEM Sport springs. A day after the installation, the car may still be settling in.

Looks aside, the car handles much better. Just seems more planted, with less side-to-side movement in quick turns. My short test drive in the hills outside of Philadelphia were a blast.

I remember this bolt being a major pain in the butt. It seems if the top spindle hole and the upper strut holes aren't perfectly in line, that the bolt doesn't seem to want to go in all the way. I think the reason is beacuse that top bolt isn't shaped like a real bolt, I think the main bolt body was fatter than the thread section.

You may have to loosen the two lower bolts, then wiggle the strut-to-kingpin joint a bunch (to get it perfectly aligned) while banging the bolt all the way in with a hammer.

It seems to me that the key was to tighen the top bolt first then the lower bolts. Oh, and a lot of brute force to get those top holes aligned. :)

IMO, it's an Alignment issue between the strut and the hub, I think I had it once, when I was installing the Bilstein on the driver's side, it went in 2/3 of the way, hung up and wouldn't budge so I backed it out with a Impact gun and did it again, and it went fine.


400lb impact gun, no problems on the last set I did.

Looking forward to replace the Bilsteins HDs with Koni Sports this winter sometime, which will be the 2nd set of shocks for the Club Sport. Plus I am ditching the OEM e46 M RSM, and going with some hopefully "Heavy" duty Rogue Engineering RSM.