What have you done to your E89 today
- Thread starter Bombur
- Start date
Whitchurch
Scottish Borders
Discussed elsewhere…if you think this is a porn star then ‘YOU ARE SHOWING YOUR AGE!”Very porn star
Did you go stock OE adaptive?Changed my rear shocks a few weeks back. I noticed the strut top mounts were not the best as were the bump stops. So today I fitted all new.
I now have a tight rear end!
Ohio
Attempt no 2 to re-lacquer the damaged caliper paint plus fresh Phoenix Gold and La Que on the rear caliper cradles..these ones are normal F10 versions..the M5 version no longer works without spacers with the updated machined rear brake adapter brackets..
Its good stuff but temp sensitive..I've left the heater on in the shed to help cook it..wife is at home so oven out of bounds!
About the only frigging thing I haven’t got!A cheap air-fryer exclusively for the garage, perhaps?
Edinburgh
Replacement load cover hinge from Ali Express. Can’t believe you can’t buy this piece individually from BMW. Still, this fitted perfectly.
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Another one of those in theory short jobs…
Remove the standard rear anti-roll bar drop links that are fixed in length to suit the standard ride heights and standard ARB with adjustable versions.
Theory dictates that the ARB should be set with zero preload on the links front and rear with the car sat on the ground in the intended loaded position.
I suspect very few are..if for no other reason that it’s not very easy to do with the wheel fitted and that means you need axle supports or some other method to preload the suspension to the correct ride height.
Since I’ve now custom tweaked my Ohlins Road Track shocks with uprated springs and different ride heights ..and with H&R ARBs it should be done ‘properly’…
However trying to get the old droplinks off was a job over 3 days…
There is NO room to get sockets in on the top ones..and precious little room on the bottom ones..many hours trying to fabricate something that had enough leverage with access…I should have bitten the bullet and removed the springs and shocks..not that it would have helped much..
The extension tension on the ARB with the suspension of full droop was one thing..
Then I discovered that my local garage guy who fitted the H&R ARBs way back in 2022 had ‘mullered’ the threads on the bottom drop link shouldered bolt.
You can see the thread is twisted and damaged…took over 180nm on the torque wrench to move the critter..and the nut fought me all the way to the end.
I was crying by my metaphorical quiet river as these bolts are custom made by H&R and are not available as spares…
But loh..through the joys of Christmas ..I found a bag in my store with a number of new bolts including two of the offending type…a Christmas miracle!
How, why, when they appeared I can’t think off…I can only assume that the other H&R ARB fitted to my 20i MSport never used them..?
Anyway 3 days and about 6 hours of labour / head scratching and I’m ready to start the reassembler process…
Remove the standard rear anti-roll bar drop links that are fixed in length to suit the standard ride heights and standard ARB with adjustable versions.
Theory dictates that the ARB should be set with zero preload on the links front and rear with the car sat on the ground in the intended loaded position.
I suspect very few are..if for no other reason that it’s not very easy to do with the wheel fitted and that means you need axle supports or some other method to preload the suspension to the correct ride height.
Since I’ve now custom tweaked my Ohlins Road Track shocks with uprated springs and different ride heights ..and with H&R ARBs it should be done ‘properly’…
However trying to get the old droplinks off was a job over 3 days…
There is NO room to get sockets in on the top ones..and precious little room on the bottom ones..many hours trying to fabricate something that had enough leverage with access…I should have bitten the bullet and removed the springs and shocks..not that it would have helped much..
The extension tension on the ARB with the suspension of full droop was one thing..
Then I discovered that my local garage guy who fitted the H&R ARBs way back in 2022 had ‘mullered’ the threads on the bottom drop link shouldered bolt.
You can see the thread is twisted and damaged…took over 180nm on the torque wrench to move the critter..and the nut fought me all the way to the end.
I was crying by my metaphorical quiet river as these bolts are custom made by H&R and are not available as spares…
But loh..through the joys of Christmas ..I found a bag in my store with a number of new bolts including two of the offending type…a Christmas miracle!
How, why, when they appeared I can’t think off…I can only assume that the other H&R ARB fitted to my 20i MSport never used them..?
Anyway 3 days and about 6 hours of labour / head scratching and I’m ready to start the reassembler process…
Steadily worked at fitting the uprated ARB links to the H&R ARB..
Squared the circle of preloading the ride height with no wheels by using these very fetching very tall Draper axle stands…
For the uprated ARBs these drop links are soooo much better than the stock ones…
I’ve set the rear ARB on its hardest setting ..previously on this car and my 20i MSport used the medium setting..
Everything seems to now line up well with no clearance issues on either the drive shaft or the rear lower camber arm which folks report are major issues with stock drop links…/lowered cars..
Interestingly either the ARB is bent / the suspension is slightly different on each side but needed quite a few turns on the RHS shorter to get the bar to fit without preload both across the axles and with the overall preload..
Suspect that’s why the previous gorilla mullered the bolts trying to get them in with attendant preload / distortion..
Squared the circle of preloading the ride height with no wheels by using these very fetching very tall Draper axle stands…
For the uprated ARBs these drop links are soooo much better than the stock ones…
I’ve set the rear ARB on its hardest setting ..previously on this car and my 20i MSport used the medium setting..
Everything seems to now line up well with no clearance issues on either the drive shaft or the rear lower camber arm which folks report are major issues with stock drop links…/lowered cars..
Interestingly either the ARB is bent / the suspension is slightly different on each side but needed quite a few turns on the RHS shorter to get the bar to fit without preload both across the axles and with the overall preload..
Suspect that’s why the previous gorilla mullered the bolts trying to get them in with attendant preload / distortion..
Moving to the front…pre loaded the front axle parts on my new taller axle mounts..
Adjusted the front ARB..no adjustment holes , I suspect for safety reasons…don’t want front oversteer..
Lined up bar , fresh washers and nuts..very easy with the axle stands…
Whilst loaded tightened up the subframe to steering knuckle strut..as advised in TIS..
Adjusted the front ARB..no adjustment holes , I suspect for safety reasons…don’t want front oversteer..
Lined up bar , fresh washers and nuts..very easy with the axle stands…
Whilst loaded tightened up the subframe to steering knuckle strut..as advised in TIS..
New Year’s Eve saw the fitment of the production version of my design for a rear BBK for E89s.
I’d fitted a prototype version early in 2025 and there were a couple of issues with it…one was that the initial design required a couple of spacer washers on certain parts of the adapter bracket to get the caliper cradle (BMW M5/F10) to be fully centralised on the disc..345mm BMW E60, 370mm BMW F01.
Each version different combination of washers. I’d plagiarised the caliper cradle bracket design from other similar BBKs for other cars.
However all these designs used 1mm wider hole spacing than bolt size ..the combination causes a fair degree of ‘slop’ in the total structure prior to torque-ing up the bolts.
This version 7 production bracket uses 0.1mm tolerances instead and has fully rebated machining so no spacers are required.
Interesting the left hand version that used TRW caliper cradle (BMW OE) mated perfectly with the M5 caliper and the bracket…the right hand cradle is a NTY copy and just wasn’t as good at mating up with the OE caliper..did it in the end but more faff.
So the production version now installed in a fetching Phoenix Gold with Ferodo DS2500 pads to match the front…just need to apply the brakes a couple of times from a cold start ..otherwise you don’t stop!
I’d fitted a prototype version early in 2025 and there were a couple of issues with it…one was that the initial design required a couple of spacer washers on certain parts of the adapter bracket to get the caliper cradle (BMW M5/F10) to be fully centralised on the disc..345mm BMW E60, 370mm BMW F01.
Each version different combination of washers. I’d plagiarised the caliper cradle bracket design from other similar BBKs for other cars.
However all these designs used 1mm wider hole spacing than bolt size ..the combination causes a fair degree of ‘slop’ in the total structure prior to torque-ing up the bolts.
This version 7 production bracket uses 0.1mm tolerances instead and has fully rebated machining so no spacers are required.
Interesting the left hand version that used TRW caliper cradle (BMW OE) mated perfectly with the M5 caliper and the bracket…the right hand cradle is a NTY copy and just wasn’t as good at mating up with the OE caliper..did it in the end but more faff.
So the production version now installed in a fetching Phoenix Gold with Ferodo DS2500 pads to match the front…just need to apply the brakes a couple of times from a cold start ..otherwise you don’t stop!
Something nice n geeky for those whose previous technical forays were agonising over which colour to paint their alloys…
Here is the CIC computer which powers the idrive screen and system.
Used for the E89 for it whole run and first released in 2008..its a product of the very early 21st century..
Still useful as its plugged into many sub systems on the E89 and with a MMI box does a great CarPlay rendition.
The map data and the cd track info and possibly some stored audio resides on a 80gb ruggedised hard drive similar to an old laptop drive.
It’s held in a cradle and can be easier swapped out.
There are a number of failure modes on these units, one is the failure of this drive.
A geeky dodge is to clone the contents of the drive before it fails and transfer it to a solid state drive..
Apart from better reliability the SSD has much much faster I/O…over 10 times faster at 50m/bytes per sec
So…your menus won’t operate faster but any map function will be a lot quicker…
There's a chicken and egg issue..you have to copy the image of the hard drive BEFORE it fails..then its too late.
The drive was formatted and used in a Unix system (QNX) that idrive on E89/90 uses.
So any normal PC file utilility will fail.
As you can see there's not that much actually stored on the drive.
Pointless storing audio as its crap quality!
You need a whole image file manager and an adapter cable to be able to read the old hard drive and then write that to a USB stick..then read the USB stick to write to the new SSD.
Fof those who asked the old hard drive is held to its carrier with just 4 small screws..remove them and fit the now copied SSD and you are good to go!
Here is the CIC computer which powers the idrive screen and system.
Used for the E89 for it whole run and first released in 2008..its a product of the very early 21st century..
Still useful as its plugged into many sub systems on the E89 and with a MMI box does a great CarPlay rendition.
The map data and the cd track info and possibly some stored audio resides on a 80gb ruggedised hard drive similar to an old laptop drive.
It’s held in a cradle and can be easier swapped out.
There are a number of failure modes on these units, one is the failure of this drive.
A geeky dodge is to clone the contents of the drive before it fails and transfer it to a solid state drive..
Apart from better reliability the SSD has much much faster I/O…over 10 times faster at 50m/bytes per sec
So…your menus won’t operate faster but any map function will be a lot quicker…
There's a chicken and egg issue..you have to copy the image of the hard drive BEFORE it fails..then its too late.
The drive was formatted and used in a Unix system (QNX) that idrive on E89/90 uses.
So any normal PC file utilility will fail.
As you can see there's not that much actually stored on the drive.
Pointless storing audio as its crap quality!
You need a whole image file manager and an adapter cable to be able to read the old hard drive and then write that to a USB stick..then read the USB stick to write to the new SSD.
Fof those who asked the old hard drive is held to its carrier with just 4 small screws..remove them and fit the now copied SSD and you are good to go!