[Sidewinderpb]

So I recently threw a set of KW V3's on my 2011 e92 335xi, and dropped it pretty low. For the life of me, I cannot get the car to go straight. There is about an inch of play is the steering wheel, and the car roams left and right as it pleases. It's absolutely unbearable to drive.

I took it in for an alignment last week, and big surprise, it still handles like shit. Not to mention the car smelled like burnt clutch, the clutch pedal was softer, and they banged up my steering wheel adjustment lever. They really screwed me.

Anyone who knows about xDrive alignments, please take a look and let me know what you think.

[Sidewinderpb]

Bump

[The HACK]

Originally Posted by Sidewinderpb

...and dropped it pretty low...

I don't know what you actually expect. Take a look at your alignment sheet. ALL of your camber settings are well out of the factory range, and we're not talking about just slightly...Your rear camber is nearly 2X that of the factor's maximum allowed setting.

And you're surprised the car is now "squirrel-y" and it roams left and right as it pleases? Duh. That's what it's suppose to do with that much negative camber.

[VTECaddict]

That right rear camber is out of whack compared to the left. They should be pretty much equal. Don't be too concerned about staying within stock specs, you most likely won't be able to if you're slammed. Just make sure they're equal between the left and right.

You should double check that everything was installed and tightened correctly, and that there aren't any bent or damaged suspension pieces (especially on that right rear).

[Sidewinderpb]

Thanks for the input. I spoke with them today and told them that the alignment is clearly fucked. They handed me a sheet, which stated that they did a shit job and the alignment is fucked. I'll be taking it back ASAP and waiting while they do it - so that they don't screw up anything else.

[AgentAvalos]

theres an easy fix for that, its called "hold your steering wheel tight".

[X_Drive]

I have a funny feeling they aligned you car using the RWD settings. I am guessing your vehicle is slammed? So may I ask if you measured the ride heights of each corner before the alignment? If not, then having a car that is lopsided may drive lopsided, as you explained.

Here are the specs for E9x (2009-12) X-Drive (Allrad) w/ 18" Wheel (Using a Hunter w/ BMW-Kinematics Diagnosis System)

Front Ride Height: 617mm (+40mm-20mm)
Rear Ride Height: 597mm (+40mm-20mm)

Rear Camber: Left and Right= -1.25' (+/- 0.05')
Rear Toe: Left and Right= 0.05'(+/- 0.02")
Total Rear Toe: 0.09'(+/- 0.04')

Front Camber: Left= -0.36'(+/- 0.25')
Front Camber: Right= -0.37'(+/- 0.25')
Front Toe: Left and Right= 0.01"(+/- 0.02')
Total Front Toe: 0.02'(+/- 0.04')

Setback: 0.00'(+/- 0.15')

I don't use fractions, so these figures are in degrees and minutes.

I'd take your vehicle back and ask them politely to use the E9x X-Drive specific alignment specs and re-align your vehicle.

[only1harry]

Those guys did not use the correct alignment specs for your '11 335i Xdrive. I had a wheel alignment done on my 2011 335xdrive and the specs & ranges that X_Drive posted are absolutely correct.

Mine were done in degrees too and I told them what I wanted when I saw the ranges on the machine (I have a printout too). I had them do 0.01' for both L & R front toe, and 0.04' for the rear L & R toe. Those were smack in the middle of the ranges. I wanted a better or more "factory ride" but it didn't me either. I have some kind of suspension issue in the front that I am trying to get my dealer to fix but they suck. My steering is "squirrely" too, not precise, and the car wanders a lot and it's hard to keep it going straight. I also have some vibrations coming from the steering and the car jumps left or right when I got over small bumps and imperfections. It doesn't track solid and straight like it used to. I know it's a tension bar or LCA bushing or something and I have a squeaking noise coming from the front when I apply the brakes that is clearly a loose suspension bar/rod or a cracked bushing. The stupid BMW dealer replaced F & R rotors and pads because they are retarded. Braking did not improve at all which clearly tells me it wasn't the brakes, and NOTHING changed. The noise and all the steering symptoms are still there indicative of a bad shock or bad bushing. I can't believe these people are called "factory trained". That's probably BS and none of them have seen the inside of a German shop or have spoken to a German mechanic/trainer in their life. They are class C mechanics at best. They also destroyed one of my snow tires when they removed them to put the Pilots back on. I am dealing with complete amateurs. True Class A mechanics are very hard to find these days.
Good luck with your problem. I will let everyone know when they figure mine out. If I could only get under the car with a flashlight and show those idiots the hair crack in one of the bushings. And all they need to do is grap on to the LCA's and hang from them like monkeys. No pun intended.. Sorry the dealer really frustrates me and stress me out with their denial of everything even after driving the car. I don't think they drive new BMW's much. Only when they are broken, so they don't know what the car drove like when it was new to compare. I don't know how else to explain it when they look at you and say we found nothing wrong. I can't wrap my head around it. I guess they don't care about customer satisfaction or ratings. Sorry for my rant!
Harry

[X_Drive]

Hi Harry, unfortunately people that work at dealerships are much like everything else. They have good techs and not so good techs.

It sounds to me that the tech working in your vehicle didn't know what to look for and just tossed parts to get your car out of the shop so he could get a gravy job after.

I haven't driven your car, however I can probably be safe of bet that your tension arm/thrust rod bushings are worn out. You mentioned that there is a clunk of some sort when braking. This is a common symptom of worn or delaminates thrust rod bushings.

This can also cause wander as it does in a way affect caster. All these bushings do is prevent your front wheels from tearing off during acceleration and deceleration/braking.

I'd bring your vehicle back and ask them to inspect your bushings. It's hard to see the cracks, however if you look closely you'll see them.

HTH

[only1harry]

Thanks. I did ask the Service Manager to have all the bushings checked and he said "I am sure they did that. They would have seen a bad bushing because the damage is usually obvious and the bushings get mangled". I told him it's the opposite. Hair cracks in bushings are hard to see and you need to inspect very carefully with a strong light. I even told him at least one of the tension arms or bushings is bad and to look at those specifically. They are useless. I have a meeting with him on Monday when I bring my car back. The funny thing is they are blaming everything on bent wheels and they want $190 to fix the wheels. They think all their customers are ignorant. They are just trying to get $ out of me to offset the cost of doing the warranty work on the car. The problem is they only get about 1/2 the hourly pay from BMW for warranty work, so they want to charge you extra for other things that are not under warranty. I told him I have owned 20 new cars and know all the tricks. My brother-in-law used to be a GM at a Ford Dealership. I plan on talking to the GM if I don't get anywhere with the service manager and I already have a call in with BMWNA and have opened a case with them. They said to call them back if this visit does not work or fix the problem(s).
Harry

[Sidewinderpb]

Originally Posted by X_Drive

I have a funny feeling they aligned you car using the RWD settings. I am guessing your vehicle is slammed? So may I ask if you measured the ride heights of each corner before the alignment? If not, then having a car that is lopsided may drive lopsided, as you explained.

Here are the specs for E9x (2009-12) X-Drive (Allrad) w/ 18" Wheel (Using a Hunter w/ BMW-Kinematics Diagnosis System)

Front Ride Height: 617mm (+40mm-20mm)
Rear Ride Height: 597mm (+40mm-20mm)

Rear Camber: Left and Right= -1.25' (+/- 0.05')
Rear Toe: Left and Right= 0.05'(+/- 0.02")
Total Rear Toe: 0.09'(+/- 0.04')

Front Camber: Left= -0.36'(+/- 0.25')
Front Camber: Right= -0.37'(+/- 0.25')
Front Toe: Left and Right= 0.01"(+/- 0.02')
Total Front Toe: 0.02'(+/- 0.04')

Setback: 0.00'(+/- 0.15')

I don't use fractions, so these figures are in degrees and minutes.

I'd take your vehicle back and ask them politely to use the E9x X-Drive specific alignment specs and re-align your vehicle.

You're the man! I couldn't find these specs anywhere. Thanks bud.

I'll choose to ignore the two jackasses.

[The HACK]

Originally Posted by Sidewinderpb

I'll choose to ignore the two jackasses.

LOL. One of the jackasses probably gave you the ONLY usable and correct advice on this thread.

Look. I'll be the first one to admit there are some pretty dumb mechanics out there. It's the universal truth, no matter what field you're working in, there are plenty of people in each field that probably shouldn't belong.

But even the DUMBEST mechanic in the world would tried to align your suspension to the best of their ability to be within the RANGE that the computer tell them to align to. The fact that all your camber are so out of spec, is indicative not of their incompetence, nor the fact that they tried to align it to the wrong vehicle spec, but because your car is so low that they can't possibly aligned it to range. Take a look at the range in your alignment sheet. They couldn't get CLOSE to it. What makes you think they'll be able to get close to those alignment numbers even if they were to align it to Xi specs, which calls for LESS camber? Since factory alignment only allows for about 1/2º of camber change, there's no way for them to bring your camber anywhere remotely close to any of BMW's factory specs, so they probably tried to align it to the closest spec available.

What you need are not "Xi" alignment specs. What you need, are adjustable links that will allow them to dial down the camber. Because that "wandering" feel you get is because the car has too much camber, or more than what you're used to, and the camber allows the wheels to follow the change in camber or grooves in the road, resulting in what the industry calls "tramlining," or the tendency for the car to wander left AND right due to changes in surface.

Lastly, I'm not on here to be a jack-ass on purpose. I am a jack-ass because it's hard not to be because of threads like this.

Now, I'm going to give you another piece of advice. I suggest you ignore it because frankly, you will.

BMW didn't set these alignment for performance reasons. BMW set these alignment because the vast majority of people who buy their car don't care for sheer performance, but for a compromise in a car that offers the tantalizing possibility of performance, yet their drivers demand comfort and usability. BMW set the camber for factory settings purposely low because it'll be more comfortable to drive (lessen the tramlining/wandering steering), prolong the life of the tires, at the expense of PERFORMANCE. It's a compromise in order to sell cars.

There are probably plenty of people who sit here and say, damn I wish I can get -1.7º of negative camber up front. Or -2.2º of camber in the rear (heck I'm maxed out on my rear camber and I can only get -2.0º). There's probably also a good reason why the Xi specs call for a much lower range of camber, especially when that rear camber would actually fall within the factory specs for an M (of a by-gone generation, unfortunately).

I'm always fond of saying this. That whenever you modify a car, you need to know what your ultimate goal is, and then compromise accordingly. The specs that the shop has aligned the car to actually would work very well in a performance application. It would in fact preserve your tire life AND give you more cornering grip than the factory spec would...If you were to take your car to the track. But for a purely street driven car, no matter how "spiritedly" you supposedly drive, it's going to eat the inside of the tires. You'll probably get the inside half of the tires being all used up, while the outside half still have over 60% of life (in essence, costing you about 60% of the usable tire life).

So if your ultimate goal is to have a slammed car? Well, first, I probably wouldn't start out with an Xi because it sort of defeats the purpose. But if you want a slammed car, but don't want any of the performance advantages that comes with it because you rarely drive the car past what 2/10th of what it's capable of? Then you need adjustable camber links/camber plates to bring the camber more along the factory specs, because at your ride height and the factory range of adjustment, you're never going to be able to bring those alignment settings within spec. If your ultimate goal is to have a car that handles great for performance driving purposes? Then I get camber plates and camber links to bring as much camber as you can tolerate.

But you should probably ignore what I said here because you'll probably get offended by this jackass. Oh and don't assume that just because they sound informative, that they know what they're doing or saying. Myself included. Because, frankly, the percentage of people who don't know what they're talking about or doing on an internet forum is much higher than those in real life professions.

[Sidewinderpb]

I was referring more to the fact that the measurements are entirely uneven. Never said I expected the camber to be within the OEM range.
It being an xi, the car cannot be slammed to the ground - nor would I want it to be.
If I knew what the specs should be, I wouldn't have created this thread.
Why don't you take a seat and cool off asshole.

I also asked for an aggressive (non-OEM) alignment. I guess that makes your entire argument irrelevant.

[Conti.]

lesson learned. never ever go to "The Shop" in norwalk ct haha. i'd be afraid to even go back there. try bonenfant alignment up the street from you or look up another good place that works with lowered cars and is actually capable of alignments.

[Sidewinderpb]

Originally Posted by Conti.

lesson learned. never ever go to "The Shop" in norwalk ct haha. i'd be afraid to even go back there. try bonenfant alignment up the street from you or look up another good place that works with lowered cars and is actually capable of alignments.

Seriously dude haha. Those guys are idiots.

[oneha1980]

here is my specs if it helps.. obviously, mine is not as slammed as yours, about a finger gap.. my car drove ok before i got an alignment but it feels much better after getting it done..