E90 drag oriented rear suspension Bill of Material/Build

[Bantam]

I have an e90 335i that is on stock suspension, with 275/40/18 Michelin PSS tires, and a quafie LSD, currently tuned to about 450whp on stock turbos.

I have been having problems when the car breaks traction where the rear will kick aggressively to the right, and in addition, the car seems to break traction quite easily. My suspicion is that the rear end is getting out of line due to the stock subframe bushings and/or trailing arm/toe bushings.

Below is my plan to fix it:


Also add SPL eccentric lockout kit to this list for the toe arm
I also purchased a differential lockdown kit in addition to the above parts.




Toe Arms:
I chose the AKG because they were the only brand that mentioned that they include a seal for their bearing. Overall, their bearings are quite unimpressive compared to the OEM style bearings used elsewhere, but hopefully they prove to be reliable. I also chose the SPL eccentric lockout kit to hopefully save the guy doing the alignment some headaches.

More info to follow as the build continues.

[vrsixxxxxx]

Nice write up. Your first issue is your tires. I have all solid diff and subframe bushings with m control arms and stock everything else. Diff brace also. are you mt or at? I drag race and managed a best 1.58 60foot

[Bantam]

I have an AT, I would be happy with that kind of 60ft time, but also want the car to hook decently on the street. I have a set of Mickey Thompson s/s 275/45/18 tires that I am going to try to fit for track use, but unsure how well they will fit.

[vrsixxxxxx]

They will fit fine. I used to run those on my 1 before. They will hook for sure. Do you have LSD?

[Bantam]

Good to know that the tires should fit, are they tolerable for street driving? I already have a Quafie LSD, but so far it just seems like it has made it easier to lose the rear end.

[vrsixxxxxx]

Just don't drive in the rain. Gets really sketchy

[Bantam]

About the ADE Shock Kit:

I purchased this used from another member, so it saved me from the business issues of dealing with ADE as I have heard that their ability to deliver product is quite abysmal. There is not much to the setup, I really wish that someone else would make a kit to use these shocks.

I really wanted the double adjustable shocks so that I could crank the rebound damping way up at the strip and hopefully keep the car squatted during shifts.

The Kit has a couple of minor issues:
1) There is no hard stop for the top shock mount, meaning that you could quite easily over-squeeze and damage the rubber on the top mounts. I set my torque wrench for 15 lb-ft which seemed to provide a good squeeze without excessively compressing the rubber
2) The compression knob is not positively located to the shaft that it is turning, meaning you could force it to slip if you tried to turn the knob too far.
3) Some hardware is steel and might corrode easily.

To improve the compression adjustments a bit, I put markings on the shock, and loctited the set screw for the knob, so you would know when you reached the end of travel and hopefully reduce the risk of spinning the knob on the shaft.

For the rebound side, I added a red mark so that it would be easier to visually check and make sure that both shocks were adjusted the same.


for the bump stops, I could not make the bellows that I received in my kit work properly (too short), so I re-used my old sleeves from my OEM shocks to hopefully keep the dust out.