PranK

This is so awesome. I might have wet myself a little when they revealed the wheels.

Hi and welcome! What model stagea are you looking for?

Yikes

Thread closed. The behaviour in this thread is unacceptable.

Holy shit. Grow up, all of you. Topic closed.

Yes! Exactly.

Note the bottom of my front bar SCREAMING for help.

Wow, clearly its been a while since I updated this. The car didn't have anything really changed on it for a long time but then I bought Eibach springs because the non M-Sport suspension was just way too high. It was supposed to drop the car around 25mm all round but seemed to go a fair bit lower than that. When I swapped them out I realised my struts/shocks were toast (absolutely zero rebound when hand compressed) and so I bought a set of super cheap KYB and an unknown brand to replace them to buy me some time. With this bog stock setup and with the cheapie suspension and a set of Hankook RS4's, I managed a best time of 1:18.9 at Wakefield. This was a bit irritating though because it was the last session and the car started misfiring really badly on the straight of the final (and best) lap. I reckon without the misfiring I could have had another second and at least another lap or two. Misfiring was just a partially unplugged coilpack. It was pretty warm in the bay, maybe it shifted a little when it heated up. Not once did the car oversteer. I never lost rear end grip. Now, clearly the old girl isn't a sprightly lass, but I thought I'd get something. I also had a fair bit of roll. One thing that blew me away was the brakes. Single piston front and rear, 330mm front and 336mm rear discs. Just kept going. I was absolutely mashing the peddle, the car would do a little wiggle and she'd pull up. Every time! Never faded on me, no matter how hard I tried. My brother in law in his 130i 6 speed was 2 seconds quicker (i think) but he's a small bloke and that car is a bit lighter than mine. Same tyres though. So, we did some research and made some changes; Whiteline front (27mm) and rear (16mm) sway bars Whiteline rear subframe bush inserts Heavy duty front sway bar links M3 front control & radius arms HEL braided lines and full brakes flush. Also, managed to get some 2nd hand Bilstein B8's. After putting this all in and having a full alignment done (to -1.5 deg front camber) and the car is a different beast. The turn in is insane and the roll, general stiffness and shock performance is absolutely perfect. At least on the street. I do admit that I've lost a bit of comfort. The rear inserts have made every single little road noise echo in the car and she's very stiff. But I've always liked hard suspension. She's also VERY low. Much lower than the disclosed amount on the springs. I have bought some E30 spring perches which are identical to E90 but 10mm higher which will raise the car and give me 10mm of shock travel back. Anyway, here's the old girl. I love this car!

Have you had anything else in the car to compare them with?

@True Slide I have some experience with other coil overs like this which was my main concern. In the end I went with Bilstein B8's and Eibach springs which feel awesome.

God damn I love E34's. Keen to see any work on that.

Did you sell or change your mind?

A few years ago I bought a BMW Individual steering wheel for my E90. My car is the non M-Sport so it came with a bus sized steering wheel which was thin and horrible. The BMW Individual wheel is thick and soft and just really nice but it left a lot to be desired regarding its condition. These wheels in good nic go for stupid money and I grabbed this for $250. I find steering wheels to be really important to the way I feel about a car. A shitty or uncomfortable wheel is just not going to cut it. Also, for those curious, when you can't get all your desired options on a new BMW, they upsell you with BMW Individual which allows for a much more personalised car but with a hefty price. So, I used my Individual wheel for a few years but the leather was really in a bad way and just irritated me so I replaced it with an X1 wheel which I quickly regretted. I decided to restore the leather on the Individual wheel before putting it back in the car. Note that the pics do not do the damage justice. I looked at lots of products available to me and I was most interested in the Leatherique offering but eventually settled on the Leather Hero product because it is Australian and I like to support local. I found out after buying it that they are only 5 mins away from me which is crazy because if you know anything about the Northern Beaches you'll know that *nothing* is 5 mins away. I bought 'The Works' steering wheel restore package which was stupid because I didn't use half of it. The Works is for cracks, cuts, divets etc which I didn't have. The Essentials would have been fine for $20 cheaper. The Individual wheels have this trim piece through the steering wheel which looks nice but made it more difficult to restore because I kept having to re-tape it up. The centre trim on this wheel in early pics is the X1 wheel trim as the Individual one (matte black) is in the car on the X1 wheel. The instructions that were supplied were very light on details and were for the companies furniture leather products. I started with their cleaner and scourer to clean the wheel. I had to scrub extra hard because there was a lot of remnants of my last attempt to restore using nothing but cheap black dye. I then sanded with the tiny piece of supplied 800 grit which really could barely sand half the wheel but I had none of my own so did the best I could. Ridiculous area to cheap on. I also grabbed an axle stand to hold the wheel while I sat and did the resto. Next step was the primer which was super thin and went on like soapy water. The instructions failed to mention that this will absolutely cause high spots so waiting for the bubbles to go down is not clever. This ultimately stopped my wheel having great results in the end because of these high spots and no sand paper. Better instructions or videos would have saved me here. It was then time to colour the wheel which was easy enough. The kit comes with an application sponge. I put the first two coats on by wiping but then changed to dabbing to remove the stroke marks in the leather. More re-applying tape between each step. After the colour it was time for the top coat. I requested matte for mine but wow, it is very matte! It feels almost like moleskin. I think I'll go for satin if I was to do it again. The wheel has a heap of imperfections. Mainly relating to the primer high spots and also from adding/removing tape. I think once its in the car it will be hard to notice them and I think that after a few months of use it'll look better too. The wheel is very nice to hold and feels a little alcantara-ish but I'm sure that'll go away. I still need to clean up the trim piece with some alcohol. The Leather Hero stuff is all water based so shouldn't be too hard. I think Leather Hero are shooting themselves in the foot a little here. I think the supplied products are good but the lack of information is doing them an injustice. I mean, how hard would it be to film a few restorations for YouTube or put some how-to's on their site, rather than send out generic instructions that lack in detail? I'd do it again because I've done it once. I might actually do this wheel again in future to get it right and maybe finish with satin instead of matte. And, in the car with the trim on ... I'll spend the next month or two in traffic working to scratch the crap off the trim. It'll give me something to do. The wheel, despite its imperfections, feels awesome. Its very grippy, really comfortable and has a smidge of alcantara about it. All in all this was a success.

I remember that well. It was much appreciated.!!

OMG Richard! @Beer BaronYou're definitely an old schooler, 100%. Its really good to see you post. It's been a really long time! I really hope things are well. Good to hear you still have your GTR.

Front lip looks like the factory Nissan lower lip extension.

Looks awesome!

Hi Guys, I'm really sorry for the delay here. I have installed a new dark theme which is based off the default theme. It's very similar to the old dark theme but I have no time to fix the old one. Just change to the new one in the footer and let me know what you think.

It looks like a Tamiya kit in those last pics!

Yeah definitely streetish. It's still my daily. I'll look them up, any idea of spring rates? I guess they'd differ.

I'd like to consider upgrading the suspension in my E90 this year. I'm far from being in a position to be able to afford anything, but I can still research The BC Coilovers that @Just Jap Racingsell - does anybody have any opinions or reviews? They look really nice and seem to have a lot of good features. They definitely seem to be good bang for buck. These are the ones I'm keen on. https://justjap.com/products/bc-racing-coilover-suspension-kit-bmw-3-series-e90-e91-e92-2

Love this. Have you started a build thread yet?

Hey! Welcome to You'll have a nice little collection with those two.

Welcome! Any pics? What're the plans with it?

The Hako looks gorgeous! Any pics of the S13?