I've been driving a 90,000-mile, 21-year-old BMW 330Ci (E46) for several weeks thanks to online auction website eBay, which owns it.
The company paid just under £9000 for it and spent a few grand giving it a few modifications to bring it more up-to-date inside – and now I’ve given it a few more.
I wanted to give it a suspension refresh and stiffen the body without turning it into a harsh road racer. I buy quite a lot of parts from eBay already, and I'm not just saying this because this car belongs to the company.
I've got a couple of old cars and a motorbike stored in the 'My Garage' section of its website, which is near-essential because it limits searches to parts that will fit a specific vehicle from an otherwise overwhelming number of results.
So I added the 330Ci to my garage too. It's also useful because you know parts will fit and you can send them back for a refund if they don't.
I opted for a bush rebuild kit (£140) for the rear suspension and new bushes for the front (which all seemingly included control arms - £292), plus a brace for the rear struts (£103) that will sit across the boot, and one for the front struts (E81).
I haven't felt a massive problem with the BMW's traction but I do like a limited-slip differential so opted for one (£649) and thought/hoped that lot combined would tighten the handling without spoiling the ride.
The car has at some point had a decent exhaust put on it, which is a little boomy, so I thought a big air filter kit (£206) might add some induction noise to balance it. And then I opted for a new steering wheel (Alcantara-finished-£319).
Seven parts, then, for £1790, and to fit them I booked an appointment with a delightful man called Derek Drinkwater, an American-car specialist whose garage does a lot of telly work and who recently recreated Cadillac's 'Le Monstre' Le Mans racer and then toured around the US in it, pulling a tiny caravan. Also: very serious garage envy.
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Sounds like you've moved the weight distribution a touch forward. Try adding some movable weight in the boot to see if you can alter the front-rear balance and take it from there with the suspension settings.
I know it's pedantic, but as an engineer it irritates me when I see a limited-slip differential being referred to as a "slippy diff".
LSDs by their very definition are less "slippy" than a standard open differential, so it's an abolutely nonsensical term.
Exactly, if journos want to do journo things with technical terms then at the very least STICKY diff would be more correct.
"Bent Eight" for a vee eight does my head in as well. It's not bent, it's divided in two!!! A bent eight would be a straight eight composed of two four cylinder engines with a pair of right angle bevel gears gearing the cranks together. That would be a bent eight.
Journos: It's not big and it's not clever. Stop it. Please!