Quote:
Originally Posted by 645Nm
I will be spending sometime with "Alpina B3 Lux" this week to compare his drive in your car with mine. I will be doing some mountain twisties and mainly ordinary roads for him to see how the car performs in daily driving.
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And we did indeed! It was a great day I spent with you some weeks ago. Let me first apologize for the delay in writing this, but as you can certainly all imagine, there are tons of e-mails and debriefing to get done when you come back from a longer holiday. And I was away almost three weeks - more than two of them in your fantastic country.
I know this has nothing to do in particular with cars of the suspension at hand, but as I'm writing in the African forum here I wanted to say how much I appreciated the stay in South Africa. It's a fine country - all the different landscapes, the fascinating animals (I did a 5 day safari in the Kruger with
Infinite Africa Safaris which I enjoyed tremendously), but in particular the openness and hospitality of all the South Africans I had the privilege to meet during my trip - it set a really fine example for how you make other people welcome in your country.
Charles was one of those guys, and enjoyed enormously making his acquaintance and spending the day with him and his great car, and talking about intercoolers, downpipes, suspensions and (last not least) good wine! I suppose for "normal" people it's somewhat surprising to think of meeting another member from the BMW club in the internet in South Africa, if you come over for holidays from good ol'Europe (that's what some of my friends made me understand when I told them that
) - but I'm very glad I did that.
To give a little background here - I've acquired a 335i E90 LCI some months ago, and while I have been increasing the power somewhat and adding a number of other mods (see my signature), I always had the idea of adding a different sport suspension to the mix. I was interested in particular in the Bilstein Ride Control - the company has an excellent reputation in Europe, and the possibility to change the stiffness electronically appealed to me quite a lot as the car is my daily driver and I didn't want a hard race suspension that wrecks my back after some kilometers. It's just I had some difficulty finding independent reviews of it, as the suspension is quite expensive and still relatively new. I met Tony (E92Fan) some months ago and experienced the suspension in his car on the famous Nürburgring, and was already very much impressed by it. But I also wanted to see how it did under normal conditions and public roads, something I didn't have the time to try out with Tony. So when I saw Charles' review of the suspension, and realising I was also going to be in Capetown only some weeks later, I spontaneously decided to ask him whether we could meet up and maybe have a ride to try out the Bilstein.
Well, to cut a long story short - that's what we did! Charles, you have a very nice car (although the rear wing is not to everyone's taste - but I find it quite sportive!), and the 19" rims look really awesome. I was amazed to realize that he would actually let me drive his car - and after a second or so of hesitation (you know, where I come from the steering wheel is on the other side...!) I took him up on it at once. Driving on the "other" side of the road isn't so difficult (in particular with an automatic transmission), only at crossroads I have to think a bit more where to go and the rear view mirror is somewhat bizarre...!
Here you go also with a photo of "the German from Luxembourg in South Africa" with a beautiful car besides him:
After a short trip through the city we drove to the entry to the Bainskloof mountain pass - and there I really enjoyed myself! Already on the city roads I had felt that (to my relief) the Bilstein suspension is not hard or uncomfortable at all - I would agree with Charles that it is even slightly more comfortable than the stock suspension that I have, although a factor in this could also be that I drove the car on 17" wheels which are somewhat more comfortable per se than my own 19". This was confirmed during the winding drive through the mountains (the landscape is also very beautiful) - even though the road was quite good (apparently the tarmac has been redone recently), I could feel nevertheless that the Bilstein absorbed bumps and small potholes quite nicely. And already in the normal setting it felt much tighter, less body roll, no wallowing at all - just like a really good sport suspension should feel. Taking such a road with it in a car that is so lightning fast is a real pleasure, and I enjoyed that ride tremendously. I also alternated with the settings - once you press that button (nicely hidden in the ashtray
), you feel the car stiffen up and you have an even more immediate contact with the road; it's not something I would do for everyday driving, but if you really want to push the envelope, so to speak, and burn some rubber - this is the setting to go! The response from the car is even better, it really drives like on rails, at that any speed.
I didn't drive very fast, as first of all it was not my car and secondly the road was slightly wet, but even so I managed to overtake almost anything that moved on that road, and going up and down with so much torque and taking the turns with such a fine suspension was just endless fun. - We drove quite a bit of miles more - in the mountains, in the city and I was really enjoying accelerating a bit from time to time and leave Charles' series 1 slightly behind...
I would say now that I've really had sufficient time to try out this suspension and test it under a number of conditions (although obviously not taking it even close to its limits), and it's definitely an investment that I'm going to make in the near future (once the necessary cash flow has been ensured
).
I can say without reservation that this suspension seriously improves the handling of the 335i, and to have the flexibility to choose between two settings is just great. Although the stock suspension isn't bad by all means, once you've driven either an M3 or such a Bilstein suspension, you realize just how much better it actually is. It increases the driving pleasure (and also incites you to go faster than necessary in some situations...!) and I could get a better feel for the car with it - with the stock suspension you often feel somewhat isolated from the road, and with the Bilstein you're much more "connected", without sacrificing ride comfort as other coilovers do.
In summary - a great mod to do, and even more so if you increase the power of the 335i. I have somewhat over 400hp (crank) on mine, and under spirited driving and for speeds over 200 km/h (or even more over 300
) you do wish for slightly better control, feedback and handling response, all of which the Ride Control offers.
Thanks again, Charles, for letting me experience this on my own - I think I can say that not everyone would have been so generous, and I appreciated this very much. Looking forward to meeting you again!
Alpina_B3_Lux