Setting up suspension..ride height vs corner weighs

[B21]

My 35is is fitted with the Ohlins Road and Track set up for E89s.(sadly no longer available)..

I had one Indy install the set up and didn't really follow the instructions, the net result was a very trendy lowered ride height but a bit of bottoming out on big dips at high speed.

I then got a different Indy to set it up closer to what the instructions said in terms of ride height (as measured from middle of the wheel to the top of the wheel arch)..

Much improved ride but still quite hard over sharper bumps at lower speeds.

I used adjustable camber plates on the front to get more camber (I kept the castor the same)..

The ride at speed was fine but at lower speeds (below 40 mph) quite a lot of knock n rattle from the front end.

With the winter coming up and now 3 years and 30k miles of mostly hooning on bumpy Scotttish roads I thought a service and review was required.

So I bought some Meyle top mounts for the front struts and new rear top hats as I felt maybe they were tired as they are now 83k mile 14 year old..

I decided to throw in the towel and do a one stop shop..

One of the 2 UK service centres is in sunny Barnsley...

So dropped the car of with them..with the bits I'd bought and asked them to service the shocks and install the bits at the same time as that wa s the best time to fit those parts with the dampers removed.

So £1,600 lighter..a pound for every kilo of car its back.

Each Ohlins has a £185 service fee for strip and rebuild with new parts as required..each of the Ohlins bottom bushes were worn at £55 each and 5 hours of labour was charged for, for strip and service and fit of new bushes and then geometry and set up..

Interestingly, rather than set the car up by ride height they set it by 4 corner weighs..see chart..the perverse logic is you end up with different ride heights at each corner but its asserted that the car handles much better!

What they did find was that when the car was raised up by the seocnd Indy they didn't adjust the ARB drop links so on extension /static the ARBs were contributing to the spring rate which confuses matters.

Too early to say if its a massive improvement in hooning mode as I had a slow drive back in the dark..

But the good news is much less NVH, less rattles and felt pretty smooth..

More to follow..

[The.Analyst]

Interesting write up

With Bilstein not an option to adjust the ride height

Will be good to see how it works out