Rear suspension uneven
 

I have the 318ti back when my daughter bought a new car.

I will be rebuilding the front suspension system with new control arms, tie rods and sway bar bushings. Already have all the front suspension parts ready.

Now I just noticed that the rear passenger side of the car sits a little lower compared to the driver side rear. Is the coil spring to blame or the rubber pads are compressed?

Thanks.

You can check if the spring has a broken coil. Otherwise, it would have to the the rubber that has compressed.

Look at the bottom of the spring its a surprisingly common failure on e36s.

Probably a broken spring. I doubt it's the spring pads.

Might also be a broken shock mount. You can inspect the shock mounts by pulling back the carpet on the sides of the trunk.

rubber isn't thick enough to show a noticeable "lean". at least not on my car

At 130k miles with **** Michigan roads I had 3 broken coils. 3... Common failure I'd guess.

Finally had the chance to look at the passenger rear suspension.
When I jacked up the rear, the first thing I noticed was movement on the rear passenger subframe mount. The rear subframe went all the way down when I jacked it up. Brought the rear down and the subframe went up. It looks like the rear subframe bushing is shot after 227k miles.

Can the bushing be replaced with the subframe in place? Looks like a big job.

On the E30's you can as you're supposed to knock out the bolt that the bushing connects to. I don't believe you can do the same on the Ti as the bolt will always be protruding through the bushing. You're gonna have to remove the subframe...

I have been reading up from other forums how to replace the bushing with the subframe in place. There is a combination puller and pusher to pull the bushing from the bottom that I can make based on the pictures from bimmerforums. I don't have to pull out the subframe.

Who sells rear subframe powerflex bushings?

I see. I'm not familiar with that tool. The one I know of is this: http://zdmak.com/wbstore/main.asp?ac...CTMP=1&LowCt=0

Bimmerworld sells the full line of Powerflex products.

Bimmerbum also has a couple of different options for bushings;

http://www.bimmerbum.com/suspension18.html

Thanks for the link.

Here is the pusher/puller set up for removing the bushing in place.

Ordered the urethane subframe bushings. Nice guy to deal with.

I already have the correct 2-jaw puller and I need to figure out the bottom pusher. The pusher looks like a ball joint extraction tool. Anyboy has a source for this extraction tool?

I replaced my rear subframe bushings this past summer. As I wanted to replace my rear trailing arm bushings as well, I lowered the entire subframe/differential from the vehicle. This necessitates disconnecting the rear brake lines and parking brake cables, which was OK since I needed to flush my brake fluid anyway.

I think you could do this without dropping the subframe. I'll include a picture of the tool I used for removal, which consists of a two jaw puller, a timing chain puller, a few pieces that I turned on the lathe, and some common hardware. The tool that I used for installation is rather crude - some threaded rod, wooden washers, and a piece from a Greenlee punch. If you do this on the vehicle, you'll have to deal with the bolt that secures the subframe through the bushing. The problem that I ran into was, the flange bending on the bushing during removal, which others have experienced. I used either a heat gun or propane torch to heat the area around the bushing (can't remember which), and they did finally come out. If I was doing this on a regular basis, I would make a split collar to distribute the force around the bushing flange. I''ve reached my limit on pics, so I'll post again, with a pic of what you'll be up against upon installation.

Paul

Well, I'm looking at the picture of the stud that holds the subframe in place and I'm not sure that you can do the install on the vehicle. It would entail removing the stud, so as to be able to pass a threaded rod through the bushing, but I'm not sure how you would get the stud back in, without dropping the subframe.

Here's a link to a commercially available tool, which may give you some ideas:
http://youtu.be/WCIlYkttQ2s

Also, as you search the web for info, you'll want to look at what the e30 guys are doing, as the 318ti rear suspension is very similar to the e30.

By the way, that's a common ball joint puller that most of the guys are using, an autostore commodity that they just grind down to fit openings in the bushing flange.

Paul