[SomethingBlue]

I think I have all the power upgrades I want for my daily driver 2015 F32 RWD 435. The car came with Dinan springs from the original owner and I'm getting tired of all the scraping and the firm ride. Most of the streets in the San Francisco area are torn up, and since I don't really think I'll ever track my car, I'm looking to focus on comfort more than firmness.

Spending tons of time reading so many threads here, searching 'comfort' as a search term, I'm trying to find an ideal coilover upgrade that will make for the best of both worlds, for a daily driver, with comfort being the priority.

I've been following Farkle's great YouTube videos and posts here, trying to learn more about suspension upgrades. I'm all ears for any suggestions from members who know how to dial in a better ride. I plan to add M3/M4 control arms. Front tires are 255/35/19's.

[Gen13 F36]

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[cfm56d7b]

I was in your exact situation a few years ago and selected KW Street Comfort coilovers. Excellent product if the goal is to achieve a balance between performance oriented suspension behavior and comfort.

[alohasurftoad]

Koni SA dampers with mildest lowering Eibach springs. not sure what part number it is. Search threads or posts for @johnung he has them and is quite informed.

Or KW SC as @cfm56d7b has. I havent read any review where it didnt meet or exceed expectations. Cost is a bit more, though.

[Gen13 F36]

I don't know about how to fixed scrapping than going back to stock ride height.

But firm ride is what you get with stiffer springs but it is subjective to the person. What do you mean by this? What is wrong with the ride?

You also mention previous owner change spring to Dinan... how about the shock is it still stock?

[FaRKle!]

What dampers and bump stops does this car have? Luckily getting a set of used OE springs can be done relatively inexpensively.

What part of the ride do you find most uncomfortable? What features in the road cause this?

[exE36M3]

Just from the photo, the Dinan springs look like an easy 1" drop. That's your scraping issue. A 255/35-19 tire doesn't give you much ride comfort. Compared to the stock tire size (assuming the car came with the 225/45-18 and 255/40-18), you are running 1/2" less rubber in favor of 1/2" more in a metal rim.

So stiffer springs + less tire for absorption + crappy SF streets = harsh ride. If those 255s are run-flats, I'd be surprised you still have teeth!

Personally, I'd lean toward a cheap and easy solution ... stock BMW springs. About $100-$150 for a set of the original Motorsport springs on eBay. Your suspension will gain back that 1" which does a lot for travel. Or, if you don't care about wheels, get a set of stock 18s with the 225/45-18 and 245/40-18 staggered. Or both together and you'll get back the OEM ride.

You are welcome to borrow my stock rims/tires for a week (I still have the stock 18s) if you want to experiment.

[SomethingBlue]

Originally Posted by Gen13 F36

I don't know about how to fixed scrapping than going back to stock ride height.

But firm ride is what you get with stiffer springs but it is subjective to the person. What do you mean by this? What is wrong with the ride?

You also mention previous owner change spring to Dinan... how about the shock is it still stock?

I still have the OEM springs stored away. I don't know the particulars about the suspension other than the Dinan springs were added when the rest of the Dinan upgrades were installed.

[SomethingBlue]

Originally Posted by FaRKle!

What dampers and bump stops does this car have? Luckily getting a set of used OE springs can be done relatively inexpensively.

What part of the ride do you find most uncomfortable? What features in the road cause this?

Just can't stand all the hard bumps/small and large potholes, etc in my daily commute and I'd be totally ok with an inch of space above the wheels to the wheel arch. Just tired of bottoming out and the stiff ride.

[SomethingBlue]

Originally Posted by percychow

Just from the photo, the Dinan springs look like an easy 1" drop. That's your scraping issue. A 255/35-19 tire doesn't give you much ride comfort. Compared to the stock tire size (assuming the car came with the 225/45-18 and 255/40-18), you are running 1/2" less rubber in favor of 1/2" more in a metal rim.

So stiffer springs + less tire for absorption + crappy SF streets = harsh ride. If those 255s are run-flats, I'd be surprised you still have teeth!

Personally, I'd lean toward a cheap and easy solution ... stock BMW springs. About $100-$150 for a set of the original Motorsport springs on eBay. Your suspension will gain back that 1" which does a lot for travel. Or, if you don't care about wheels, get a set of stock 18s with the 225/45-18 and 245/40-18 staggered. Or both together and you'll get back the OEM ride.

You are welcome to borrow my stock rims/tires for a week (I still have the stock 18s) if you want to experiment.

I appreciate the advice! The car came with the m4 wheels (19 inch) that are shown in the pic. All I did was go from narrower Michellin PS4S's to these slightly wider Continental Extreme Contact Sports.

[FaRKle!]

Originally Posted by SomethingBlue

I still have the OEM springs stored away. I don't know the particulars about the suspension other than the Dinan springs were added when the rest of the Dinan upgrades were installed.

If you jack the car up you can see what dampers and at least the rear bump stops you have (which should provide a clue to which front bump stops you have). What are all the Dinan parts that were added?

Originally Posted by SomethingBlue

Just can't stand all the hard bumps/small and large potholes, etc in my daily commute and I'd be totally ok with an inch of space above the wheels to the wheel arch. Just tired of bottoming out and the stiff ride.

So it's mainly shorter sharper features. Discomfort with those is usually more of a damper/bump stop thing. We really need to know what you have on the car dampers and bump stops-wise to be able to figure out a solution for better comfort. Sure, taller springs can probably help, but you're still kind of guessing.

[SomethingBlue]

Originally Posted by FaRKle!

If you jack the car up you can see what dampers and at least the rear bump stops you have (which should provide a clue to which front bump stops you have). What are all the Dinan parts that were added?



So it's mainly shorter sharper features. Discomfort with those is usually more of a damper/bump stop thing. We really need to know what you have on the car dampers and bump stops-wise to be able to figure out a solution for better comfort. Sure, taller springs can probably help, but you're still kind of guessing.

I appreciate the input! I'm an apartment dweller and it's not easy (now) to get the car up and underneath. I should have taken pictures of things when it was on the lift two weeks ago when the downpipe and GFBDV was installed.

I'm pretty sure its these exact springs, but again, I don't know about the bump-stops.

https://www.dinancars.com/products/s...arts/D100-0921

Eurotech Auto Service in Minneapolis MN does all the Dinan upgrades with the new fleet of vehicles from the nearby (owned by Penske) BMW dealership. My understanding is the entire "Stage 4" Dinan upgrade kit was installed at the same time and they also installed these Dinan Performance Springs. Id hope that it's a rather standardized approach for each model.

What was kept from OEM in terms of bump-stops, I have no idea, but I'll try to figure it out.

[FaRKle!]

Originally Posted by SomethingBlue

I appreciate the input! I'm an apartment dweller and it's not easy (now) to get the car up and underneath. I should have taken pictures of things when it was on the lift two weeks ago when the downpipe and GFBDV was installed.

I'm pretty sure its these exact springs, but again, I don't know about the bump-stops.

https://www.dinancars.com/products/s...arts/D100-0921

Eurotech Auto Service in Minneapolis MN does all the Dinan upgrades with the new fleet of vehicles from the nearby (owned by Penske) BMW dealership. My understanding is the entire "Stage 4" Dinan upgrade kit was installed at the same time and they also installed these Dinan Performance Springs. Id hope that it's a rather standardized approach for each model.

What was kept from OEM in terms of bump-stops, I have no idea, but I'll try to figure it out.

Thankfully you don't really have to get "under" the car, the gap between the wheel and the top of the fender should be enough for you to see what kind of dampers and bump stops you have (both in the front and rear). I realize getting a jack out there might not be super easy though. An auto parts store (like Autozone) might let you borrow a jack to bring out to the parking lot to check.

[johnung]

Originally Posted by SomethingBlue

I think I have all the power upgrades I want for my daily driver 2015 F32 RWD 435. The car came with Dinan springs from the original owner and I'm getting tired of all the scraping and the firm ride. Most of the streets in the San Francisco area are torn up, and since I don't really think I'll ever track my car, I'm looking to focus on comfort more than firmness.

Spending tons of time reading so many threads here, searching 'comfort' as a search term, I'm trying to find an ideal coilover upgrade that will make for the best of both worlds, for a daily driver, with comfort being the priority.

I've been following Farkle's great YouTube videos and posts here, trying to learn more about suspension upgrades. I'm all ears for any suggestions from members who know how to dial in a better ride. I plan to add M3/M4 control arms. Front tires are 255/35/19's.

I don't think that you said for sure if you have regular shocks or the Adaptive/EDC shocks. You can tell if you see it as a line item when you enter your VIN in the mdecoder website.

The Dinan springs are supposed to be about 30% stiffer than stock. A mild set of Eibachs are only about 10% stiffer than stock. That will give you a comfort improvement.

Assuming that you have standard shocks, I'd suggest replacing them with Koni Special Actives. Koni and McLaren developed the Dual Valve technology based on performance on one frequency and comfort over rough roads on another frequency. It really works! It took all of the jarring out of my suspension and rounded off things like highway seams and potholes.

Koni tested with the Eibach springs with stock BMW bump stops. I've been running this setup over 20k miles and it gave me the comfort but improved the performance on curves at the same time.

Based on what you said I would not recommend the M4 thrust arms. They are popular with track guys because the have monoball type bushings for better steering response and because the arms have a slightly different length to change the alignment for tracking.

A better solution would be to install VAC Motorsports monoball thrust arms. VAC has a real high quality monoball bushing that they install in brand new Lemforder thrust arms, so you get a brand new control arm and a brand new ball joint. Lemforder makes the arms for BMW. I have been driving them for a month. The steering at higher speeds feels pin point, like when I hit a curve on an on-ramp. You definitely feel the road more through the steering but I wouldn't characterize it as noise, vibration or harshness like you get with solid or poly bushings.

The last time that I checked they were still trying to get the product information correct so don't just order them off the website. Call with the BMW/Lemforder part numbers so that you get the correct ones. You want the upper control arms, also called thrust arms or tension struts. See photo diagram. Check your VIN on realoem for part numbers but they are probably the same as the RWD 335i.

Hope this helps!

[SomethingBlue]

Bumping my old thread. CoVID and life of course puts things on hold. After a lot of reading and talking to people, I bought a set of Ohlins R&T coilovers just this morning. They'll hopefully get installed in the next few weeks.

I'm strongly leaning towards those VAC Thrust Arms too, so thank you for that tip. I'll post some nice shots and some input on how it all turns out.

Since my last post, I added BM3 and xHP to the car, which really revolutionized the feel and responsiveness, so now, I just want to get the ride height up a bit more and a bit more comfortable without having to change wheels/tires.

[SomethingBlue]

So, Friday was the big day. I got the Ohlins R & T coilovers installed as well as the VAC monoball upper control arms. While I was there I also installed a differential brace to the rear subframe.

I'll see how the ride height settles before making any other adjustments. Ohlins sends these out basically at almost the stiffest settings, so we backed them off a bit. The change in steering feedback and responsiveness is incredible.

And I'm more inclined to creep slowly back to more stiff, because even though I can still feel all the cracks and bumps in the road, the car now settles immediately. I'd rather not have it floaty feeling and can tolerate some stiffer ride characteristics. I'm also glad that the ride height is back closer to stock.

I'll upload some photos shortly.

Thank you all for the input.

[SomethingBlue]

The most important photo would in my mind be the after shot. But after a full day of various jobs, plus dialing in the settings and test driving it a few times, I just wrapped up and left, and only took one quick cellphone shot of it at its new ride height. I'll probably get a CF front lip, it'll hide some of the scrapes and tie in better visually. Not shown, the VAC monoball upper thrust arms.


Original ride height before the coilovers.

View post on imgur.com

Differential brace added, along with closer to stock height and geometry, trying to save another half shaft/race/bearing in the future.

View post on imgur.com

Rear end after the coilovers and diff brace installed.

View post on imgur.com

Swapped in some aftermarket shifter paddles as well.

View post on imgur.com

And a crappy cellphone picture of the new ride height. It appears to have settled a hair bit more now. It rides just as firm, but it settles out from jolts and bumps quicker. I feel like there's a significant increase in road noise transmitted via the tires now.

View post on imgur.com