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BMW E36 Suspension Diagnosis
28K views
Jan 29, 2023
Explanation of the different parts of a BMW E36 suspension and a basic diagnosis of problems that you may have with your suspension. Examine all bushings, paying close attention to cracks in the rubber. Look for cracks and/or grease escaping the sway bar link. Lots of play in the tire could point to a bad tie rod and/or control arm. Just press down on the car to examine shocks and struts, if the car bounces a lot than the shocks and/or struts are blown. Suspension diagnosis on a BMW E36 is rather easier and relatively quick to do.
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0:00
Hey viewers, E36 Fanatics Steven here
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And today I'm going to show you all a little video on just diagnosing a suspension problem
0:15
in your E36 BMW. It's generally pretty simple to do. You do have to jack up the front or the rear of the car, depending on where a sound's coming from
0:27
or maybe the car is kind of bouncy, or you've got kind of a shaking in your steering wheel
0:35
or some play in it or something on those lines. So what I've done is I've jacked up the front of the car
0:41
on this BMW. The issue with it is not only is it
0:46
it's really bouncy in the front here, it's really bouncy, but as well
0:52
I've got a metal kind of ringing sound, a little metallic ringing sound
0:57
coming from the front when I go over real small bumps and such
1:01
So my guess is it's two issues. I already know the struts are bad on this car
1:07
and I'm going to show you how to tell by that. It's really easy. But I also think that the sway bar links
1:13
aren't bolted on tight enough, and that's causing the kind of metallic sound when it goes over little bumps
1:20
The other thing to note is that I've already replaced the control arms on this car before
1:25
and the sway bar and the sway bar link. so it's possible I just didn't tighten it down enough
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So at this point I'm under the car and this is a 318 eye
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So it's a little bit easier to work on and work underneath
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You can see that, let me see, so right here in the front is the sway bar
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This, these bushings on either side are called the sway bar. are called the sway bar bushings
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I replaced them a little bit ago with these polyurethane bushings. They last longer and they're considered a lot better quality
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And then I also replaced this link on either side is called the sway bar link
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And it basically attaches to the control arm, the control arm right here to your sway bar
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so it's like it's the link between your sway bar and the control arm here's the lower control
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arm but you have two lower control arms as well as part of your suspension in the front and also
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you have your tie rods which is which are these right here this is the tie rod and it goes right into it attaches basically to your right below your strut So you also have your tie rods on either side in the front that attach into your wheel well
3:08
And also right here, I don't really consider this part of the suspension as much, but this is part of the steering rack
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right here you can on either side it's busted the plastic covering and you can see
3:31
that the bushing inside is also busted so I do need to replace that these two
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soon on this car so my suspension suspension since I've already replaced this
3:46
control arm both the control arms and the sway bar links and bushings I
3:51
I believe it is the sway bar link that it hasn't been tightened up enough
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So I'm just going to take a wrench and just tighten up everything and just make sure it's tightened down
4:08
And then we'll see if that fixes my issue. A little tip for whenever you're working with suspension parts as well
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when you're doing something like checking to see if there's a loose bolt somewhere on your suspension
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go ahead and if there ends up being a loose bolt go and remove it fully and then throw some
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lock tight on it some i usually just use blue locktight just because i'm i want to take it off
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eventually to replace it again if i'm going to keep the car long term if you put anything higher like yellow or
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especially red, you're going to end up really, really going to war with it when you try and get it off
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And it just blew locktie to work just fine to keep any nut or bolt in place for the most part
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especially for suspension parts. It'll be fine. So when you're looking over your suspension, when you're underneath it
5:07
and examining the different bushings and links to tell whether or not you're having an issue with
5:16
that usually what I'll do and this is what is basically what you're going to want to do
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So this is the sway bar bushing right here. And as I'm looking at it, and I already know I replaced it just recently, but you see, there's no cracks or anything in it at all
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You know, it looks almost new, really. Usually if a bushing's going bad like this, or really always, if a bushing's gone bad and you're hearing a sound
5:46
and it might be the bushing and there's some, there a lot of sway in the front of the car Then the sway bar bushing might be for it or might be the culprit
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And the way to tell is it'll have cracks going through the middle
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little hairline cracks and such, and the rubber might even be falling apart completely
6:12
and that'll just be pretty obvious to tell you that it's time to replace it
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and these bushings and sway bar links are quite easy to replace
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The bushing is very easy to replace because it actually has a big cut along the side of it
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where you can just pull it right out and put a new one right back in
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All you have to do is remove these two 13 millimeter bolts and pull this metal casing off
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So for the sway bar link here, you'll be able to tell that if it's bad or not, it'll also have cracks running up
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have cracks running through the rubber through this rubber part right here
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Also, this is basically a, it's got a lot of basically lubricant inside it
7:00
or grease inside that rubber part right there. So when it's really
7:03
falling apart, you'll be able to certainly tell because it'll have grease falling
7:09
out coming out of it and crap and it'll also have those cracks
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And there's different parts of the control arm frequently these these bushings this bushing right here
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will go bad but the rest of the control arm will still be good so sometimes you
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end up just replacing this bushing right here I've done that before actually
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on another BMW where I just replaced this bushing so this whole control arm
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it's rather easy to do too you basically got these two big bolts here and you
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drop this out But you basically tell whether the control arm bushings and other parts are bad as well on the suspension
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by looking at the rubber and how good condition it is. As another side note, you're going to notice that working on a suspension on a BMW suspension
8:07
there's a lot of the same sockets that you're going to use
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Most frequently used ones on the suspension parts are 13 millimeters. and 17 millimeters
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Those seem to be the favorites of BMW, E36s. So there are a couple other parts that
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but a couple other parts that you diagnose differently. The wheelbearing, for example
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wheel bearings go bad, not really frequently, but they definitely go bad on these E36s
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I've had to replace them before on BMW E36. And basically how I did
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to tell whether it bad or not a wheel bearing which it a real pain in the neck job to do but it definitely doable You take the steering wheel and you shake it You basically shake it
8:58
from side to side. If there's really any play in it, then you've got a bad wheel bearing
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Other way to tell is that it'll make a really, kind of a, it's kind of hard to describe
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kind of a metallic sound when you're turning. And of course, they'll sound like a, coming from the wheel well. Last but not least, I have my incredibly sophisticated way of
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testing struts and shocks on E36 BMWs. On these cars, you have two struts in the front
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and two shocks in the rear. And it's pretty simple how I do it. I just put my hand down on the car and
9:43
and push down. If the car keeps, if the car jiggles for a bit
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like waves back up and down for a minute instead of going straight back up
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your shocks are going bad or your struts are going bad in the front
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In the rear, I do the same thing. See how much it's bouncing
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see how it keeps bouncing. If the car keeps bouncing like that, then the shocks and the struts or shocks are the struts or both of them are blown
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And last thing I check, I'm going to replace the struts. There's two other things that you replace with the struts if they're also bad
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Two other things is the strut coil, which is basically. the coil that you compressed and get it inside of the strut. And then you also have the top piece
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right here, which is called the strut mount. Now the strut mount, the way to tell that that's bad
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is it'll basically have a lot of cracks, hairline cracks running through the middle of it. A lot of
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people replace the strut mount though with the new strut, but sometimes and oftentimes
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you don't have to. So you just take a look at whether there's a lot of cracks running through it
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As you can tell on this, there's no cracks in it. So this strut mount is fine. It's just the
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strut that's blown on this car. So that does it for my diagnosing suspension issues on BMW E36s
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Hope you all enjoyed this video and y'all have a good one. Oh, and please like
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Like, comment, and subscribe if you like this video. Y'all have a good one
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