Some tin snips and a lot of flexing eventually removed the heat-trapping brake dust shields
A camber plate from Ireland Engineering should give us a bit more camber, and it replaces the worm OEM rubber units.
Chris goes to town with the 20-inch breaker bar
Unbolting the lower suspension arms from the chassis allowed us to get the stock anti-roll bar out from under the car.
The Ireland Engineering anti-roll bar endlinks are Heim-jointed goodness.
New Bilstein dampers slide into the stock housing.
Our spec H&R springs get capped off with the stock spring perch and the new camber plate/top hat.
With a combination of pushing down, pulling across and some good old fashioned hammering, the Ireland Engineering strut tower bar made it that last millimeter to slide on to the shock tower bolts.
While this end didn’t contain the joys of a big honking differential swap, we did have to get physical with some stubborn dust shields and muscle the strut tower bar into place.
With the Spec E30 looking quite goofy dragging its butt around on race springs, we figured it was only decent to upgrade the front as well. As was the case with the rear, new Bilsteins, H&R springs and brake discs were on the list. While this end didn’t contain the joys of a big honking differential swap, we did have to get physical with some stubborn dust shields and muscle the strut tower bar into place.
The biggest difficulty proved to be the anti-roll bar, specifically its removal. We had to unbolt the lower suspension arms from the chassis in order to free it from its happy home and get it free of the car; the new bar slid into place, and after a bit of heaving and hoing we got the lower suspension arms back in place and bolted back up.
Swapping the Bilstein dampers into the OEM cartridges was easy. We took the time to brush and vacuum away some of the packed sand-like gunk that had accumulated in the bottom spring perches.
The Ireland Engineering camber plates don’t allow for much adjustment in the stock damper holes, but apparently some racers go down to two adjustment bolts to gain a bit more leeway. We’ll start with the four bolts and see if we really need to go any further.
As in the rear, some Carbotech pads and brake rotors were a simple swap. When everything was put back together we bedded the pads in, and the stopping power is greatly improved over whatever mystery pads were on there before. Good brakes make us happy.
Our last component on this day was the Ireland Engineering strut tower bar. It was oh so close to sliding right on, and with a bit of persuasion it notched onto the top bolts of the front struts.
View all comments on the GRM forums
You'll need to log in to post.
