sidewayswhat! 0 Report post Posted July 12, 2012 Hey guys, so as I'm slowly building my car up for my m50 conversion I have just found out that my front struts are pretty much buggered, (little story) the guy that had the car before decide it would be a great idea to cut the front spring and put king spring in the back. the result of the cut spring, my shocks are (how do I put this nicely) F***ed and the top hat is bent to sh**, so now I have taken the sturts out and having my local suspension expert Dave at TSV build me a set of coilovers for the front at a great price, and while taking the struts out of this 23yr old car I busted my tie rod ends and lower ball joint. anyway onto what I want to know: What upgrade can I do to get more steering angle? Eg rack spacers? How do I put them in? or use another models tie rods ends e46? And to replace the lower ball joint the on the front control arm or wish bone arm should I just take that of and let Dave push a new ball joint in or is it easy to do? what tools will I need? to conclude what I'm getting at is I WANT MORE STEERING ANGLE!!!!! I wanna start learning how to drift once I have my car going and I'm trying to do it right the first time, I'll be running 15x8 for street and I want to find a set of 16x8 for drifting. -Jesse- Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
thorburn 121 Report post Posted July 12, 2012 For more lock you'll be wanting to either use rack spacers (kinda sh*t) or modify your spindle where the tie rod attaches. If you have the money use the gear made by slr(and some other companies) http://www.slrspeed.com/products.html Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
slideways 47 Report post Posted July 12, 2012 You would want to use an e36 rack for starters (3.2 turns lock to lock vs 4 ifor an e30). I had a good look and couldnt find any kind of an off the shelf rack spacer so had to make my own by having the i.d of a 27mm washer taken out to 18mm. I had to use two 3mm washers each side and thats the most you can go as the rack is limited in movement after that (unless you pull it apart and remove the power steering components). Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
sidewayswhat! 0 Report post Posted July 12, 2012 I have hurd and seen the slr product on some us cars on bimmerforum, but they are very pricey and I wish I could afford , I do plan on getting the e36 rack and there different type through all models? I'll have a talk to Dave at TSV sometime this week or next and see what he says. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
slideways 47 Report post Posted July 12, 2012 (edited) All non m3 racks are pretty much the same with the 3.2 ratio. If you can do without power steer, mods to the rack (incl. cutting extra teeth), rack spacers and machined down tie rods (as seen in bottom pic of link above) will give you plenty of lock without messing with the knuckles/geometry. Edited July 12, 2012 by slideways Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites