E30 Handling problems (A long plea for help)

[Kurt Zimmerman <kuzimmer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello Digesters,

I put some E30 M3 springs, E30 M3 rear sway bar, new control arms, new 
tie-rods, BMW camber correcting plate, and Bilstein Sport Shocks on my E30 
325is.  Several people told me that this was a nice upgrade, but warned me 
that it may not improve the handling that much, since the M3 is a little 
lighter in the front.  I took the car to a shop to have it aligned. The car is 
much stiffer, and feels more stable than before.

However, my handling problems have changed.  Before the parts change, my car 
would pitch heavily.  This lead to a severe understeer when accerlating out of 
a low speed corner.   After the parts change the pitching was dramatically 
reduced, but now the car is extremely loose when accelerating out of a corner. 
 I'm too chicken (or maybe I'm just smart) to push the car hard on high speed 
corners to see if problem occured there.  So this weekend, I asked a friend 
who is a former racer (and '71 IMSA champion--don't know what division but he 
drove a 2002) to take it for a spin.  He walked it through a couple high speed 
turns and felt that it was indeed quite loose.

I asked my friend, what he thought was wrong and he wasn't quite sure.  We 
unhooked the rear sway bar, but it was the same or maybe worse.  He said that 
the car felt like the roll center was higher in the front than it was in the 
back.  He theorized that when going around a corner, the car would not evenly 
compress the outside springs---that more weight was shifted to the rear.  We 
then took a look at the rear spring pads there was evidence that the springs 
had compressed to the bump stop.  When I replaced the rear springs I did not 
replace the spring pads.  I noticed in the Bentley book that there are 9mm 
thick pads available.  My friend suggested that these may help. 

We then started looking at the front we notice that the driver's side had 
about 1.7 degrees negative camber, but the passenger side had about 3.2 
degrees of negative camber.  I checked the specs and  1.67 degrees should be 
the upper bound.  I checked the camber correction plates and I had indeed 
added negative camber to both sides.  I then flipped the camber plate on the 
passenger side adding positive camber to the passenger side, however it still 
has about 2.5 degrees negative.  (I wasn't using a camber guage, just a level 
floor and a carpenters square that's why these measurements are approximates)  
Obviously something is bent.  Do I need to go to a frame shop?  My friend 
didn't think it was anything to worry about. I asked him if the excess camber 
would have an effect on the looseness of the car, and he said it would, but 
doubted that the effect would be as great as it is.

So the car is still loose and autocross ready.  Except that I hadn't planned 
on doing any autocrosses,  just a driving school.  I really would like to 
tighten it up, otherwise I'm going to have to sit at the end of the novice 
line.  That's okay, I'll still have fun, but I really don't want to be dirt 
tracking the car.   Any suggestions are welcome, but those that cost the least 
will be tried first.  If the cheapest thing I can do costs over $200, I might 
as well be looking at H&R springs or RDSport Sway bars.  I've already spent 
more than I planned.

Thanks in advance,

Kurt Zimmerman
Hoosier Chapter

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