e36 325is Rear Subframe

I was hoping to hear from some e36 owners on replacing all rear suspension bushings. Long story short: I picked up my car (which happens to be my first) for $800 from a good friend who planned to track it. It has 238k on it, but the engine shows some evidence of being refreshed/rebuilt. Clutch/trans seem decent, it has a z3 short shifter, bilstein sport shocks and h&r springs. It doesn't clunk when going over bumps, but it does have a slight thud in the rear if I'm abrupt with my gas/clutch action; Specifically going into 2nd. From what I can tell the subframe doesn't look torn, but I have no idea when the bushings were last replaced. I plan on getting new Subframe bushings, RTABS, Diff bushings, diff bolt, guibo, subframe reinforcement kit, and Trans/engine mounts. I was wondering if there's a build thread around here that goes over doing any of this or any decent diy's anybody has written up? Im pretty eager to learn how to do all of this myself, so any tips/tricks/diys would be great. Here's a pic of it from a street survival event. Unfortunately I don't have any good action shots. Ill be posting around more often as I work my way into autox. I got hooked at that event. Thanks

http://www.pelicanparts.com/bmw/techarticles/tech_main.htm

You're welcome

Welcome to GRM, you will have a good time here and learn a lot in the process. I joined up almost 10 years ago and have yet to leave...

From my experience, it can be pretty hard to visually identify a bad bushing. I'd start with the easy stuff and work your way up to the rear subframe, as with that kind of mileage all of them will surely need to be done anyways. BMW engine & trans mounts are a cakewalk, I'd start there.

Hopefully your car hasn't had the rear subframe separate itself from the unibody as E36's are wont to do

I joined the GRM community when I bought my E36 (granted it was a 318ti and my rear subframe adventures are different from yours) so it is nice seeing somebody else walk down the same path

SlickDizzy wrote: Hopefully your car hasn't had the rear subframe separate itself from the unibody as E36's are wont to do

I crawled under there and looked after the street survival and I didn't see any tears at the points where it connects to the unibody. It also must have been garage kept or never winter driven. Its cleaner and has less surface rust than my grandmothers 94' crown vic with 60k.

And thanks for all the warm welcomes. Trans mounts will be on order soon. That definitely seems like something I can do, especially since my car displays a lot of the signs of ones that need to be replaced.

Luckily, there are tons of forums and sources for E36 info. Google is you friend.

Pelican is a great place to start.

There is also bimmerdiy.com

And the always useful realoem.com for parts lookup.

The E36 is also a very easy car to work on. Motor and trans mounts are about a 45 minute ordeal.

transmounts are a must. They will keep your fan from impacting with the radiator and keep you from doing the dreaded "money shift"

Replace the guibo while you are under there. That is the rubber donut that isolates the transmission from the driveshaft. They can look good.. but as they get older (100,000+ miles) they can fall apart without warning

http://www.fcpeuro.com/products/bmw-suspension-refresh-upgrade-kit-e36-rear-oem-meyle-hd-e36rearkit

This is the kit I am going to use for my refresh next weekend. I am sweating bullets on getting everything pressed in without issue. I am also doing all shocks and shock mounts, engine mounts, trans mount. I already did all of the front mounts. they were easy, hoping th rear is the same. Mine is a 92 with 118K.

makes me glad I have a 318ti. Two Subframe bushings, 4 (2 per side) trailing arm bushings, and the differential bushings and I am done. None of them needed to be pressed. The subframe bushings and trailing arm bushings did need to be burned out though

That kit was just what I was looking for. Thanks for that. Im ordering the transmounts from turner tonight and hopefully will be able to get them on after school some time this week.

If you get trans mounts from turner get the race ones where the bolt goes all the way through, I had one of the street ones tear on me. If you get the race ones buy longer bolts and put an endlink bushing on the bottom side of the crossmember and it will be just as isolated as the street version but still as strong as the race version.