Quote:
Originally Posted by xfsjoker
My experience & trial as a E90 330i owner for the last 3 years:
- 70% with family on the car, so i care about how passengers affect the ride quality
- on 19" rims
- in Hong Kong ( mixed with good and bad roads)
- milege: 80,000KM
The car first came with Eibach pro kit with OEM strut - front one finger, rear 2.5 finger gap, very comfortable, will bottom out the rear and scap when 5 ppl in the car. Soft cornering.
So I swap to BC racing BR coil-overs (8k 12k ), front zero gap, rear 0.5 finger gap.
First thing first, height adjustable was a big thing to me at that time (now not so much) so i can finally have zero gap and perfect stance, very easy to adjust the damping on top. Played around for 3
months and the front bolt eye top mounts start to create ticking noise, oh not to mention I have to live with the grinding noise during hard cornering on day one. 32 way adjustment is not usable which I can only use the first 10 way from soft, beyond that would be rock stiff for me. Discussed with couple users and concluded the damping ability is the weak points of the BC BR. In fact it is impossible to find the ideal setting. Set it softest is still not comfortable as the eibach setup, especially sitting 3 people in the back is disaster... the dampers fail to absorb the bumps and car would jump up and down... Set it harder, every panels inside would create noise which is so annoying and suffering. I blame the linear springs, yes the handling would be much more responsive -- but only on flat perfect road....
So I sold the BC BR and swap to combo setup after 6 months: Koni yellow + H&R sport springs.
front zero gap, rear 1 finger gap. still very nice stance. The sport springs are still stiff but the koni would absorb much more imperfection of the roads. Loved the OEM rubber front top mount so much, it is quiet and comfort. I set it 1 turn at front and half turn on rear from soft and love it very much, the cornering information i felt is much clearer than the BC BR, and I can drive faster on the bumpy road with now with more confidence now.
During the time, I have tried my friend's car with Bilstein PSS10, it is a very comfortable setup which I believe is due to the super progressive springs ( just look at how close the gaps on the rear few bottom coils). The ride height is relatively low even it is adjustable. Lot more comfortable than my setup, but the corners ability is no match with me since it is much more softer even on the hardest setting. I would say PSs10 is very suitable or a family man. Discard the Pss10 front shocks are known to be not very liable. I might consider to purchase the PSS10 in the future, not too expensive like KWv3 and Ohlin DFV.
After i installed front and rear whiteline sways bar to see how much it would change my car. As many ppl said, installation of the rear bar is pain in the ass. Anyways, the sway changed so much on the corner handling on the car. First thing I notice is how the front sway tighten up the steering wheel. Turn a little would ends up turning much more now. I would say it makes the car much lighter and sharp during corner, which is a interesting feeling you should try. However, it somehow stiffer the left and right suspensions which would twist your car on uneven road. It also instantly stiffened up the car by 10-20%.
Therefor, I Recently purchased the yelllow BMW performance springs, which I hope it would soften the ride up a little.
I would finish the installation this week and will see.
thanks for reading.
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Nice synopsis. Appreciate the impressions.