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How to Diagnose Common BMW Suspension Problems
82K views
Jan 29, 2023
1:13 Tie Rod Test 4:50 Bad Control Arms 8:22 Bad Inner Tie Rod 10:05 Wheel Bearing 11:40 Bad Brake Rotor 12:30 Bad Strut In this video, I discuss various aspects of your BMWs suspension, how to diagnose common problems, and what to look for. There are not many components to your suspension, but they are all very important. One faulty tie rod end or ball joint can ruin your drive. In order to accurately identify issues in your BMW suspension, you will need to jack the front end up and remove your tires. At this point, you should inspect the bushing and ball joints on the control arms. Faulty control arms are a common problem on older/high mileage BMWs. Other common suspension problems that I discuss in this video include struts, sway bar link/bushing, brake rotor, wheel bearing, inner & outer tie rod.
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0:00
Hey, E36 Fanatics, Steven here
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Today I'm going to be showing you how to look at common problems with suspensions on BMWs
0:10
such as steering wheel vibration, clunking noises coming from the car whenever you're driving it
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and other issues associated with suspension issues. And then I'm also going to be showing you how to diagnose these problems
0:27
Now, being an owner of a bunch of old B&M. W's over the years. I've had my fair share of having to work on suspension issues with BMWs
0:35
And I want to show y'all how to figure out what your problem is if you have an issue with your suspension
0:41
And then I want to show you how to diagnose it. So I'm going to be showing you some of the good components when a part on a suspension is good and is, you know, in good working condition
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And then I'm going to be showing you when it's in bad condition and how to tell what's wrong with it
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it. And also if y'all want to check out our website for some time, we have a website now
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I'll put the link up in the top right corner. It's just got a bunch of helpful articles for
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BMW owners and such. And don't forget to like and subscribe. So one of the really easy ways to
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test out your tie rods and figure out whether or not you got a problem is jack the side of that
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you think is having an issue. Put it under a jack stand obviously. Then what you're going to want to do is you're going to
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want to go three nine with your hands and side to side and if you're getting a clunking motion
1:36
and a lot of movement from side to side or a little bit like a decent amount of movement from
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side to side that's going to be your that's a sign that your inner tie rod has gone out your
1:45
inner tie rod and i'm going to show you here in a minute has a ball joint and i just had to change one
1:51
on a z4 so i'm going to show you that and what it really looks like from the inside once they go out
1:56
And then another issue sometimes with suspensions are wheel bearings. And wheel bearings really suck to replace, but they do go out from time to time, especially if you've
2:08
been running on a bad suspension for a while. I used to run on my BMW on my old E36
2:15
I used to run with bad struts for maybe three, four months because I was a broke college student
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And it knocked out one of my wheel bearings, and I ended up having to replace that
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So a really easy way to test a bad wheelbarring is to just go 12 to 6 and see if there's any movement in the tire that way
2:35
There's absolutely none here. These are good wheel bearings, but there is a little movement and a little bit of a clunking noise when I go 3 to 9 here
2:45
I'm quite sure the intertie rod is out on this E36 as well
2:49
it's likely to be original. Inner tie rods, unfortunately, are often overlooked by a lot of car owners
2:57
People think that you just need to change the outer tie rods, but the inner tie rods actually have a ball joint inside of them
3:02
When they go out, it will cause issues with your steering wheel vibrating, pulling to one side or the other when you break
3:09
all those kind of different symptoms that you would initially think was just a tie rod
3:14
and could be your inner tie rod. All right, so here I got the wheel
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off and the good news about suspensions is that they're really not that complicated. There's the only
3:29
really a few important components that you got to keep in mind and they tend to have different symptoms So some of them are somewhat similar but most of them tend to have a little bit different symptoms
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Your biggest part of your front suspension is always going to be your front control arm
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which is this part right here. Now, this is an older BMW
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E36s and E46s, they have a front style control arm like this with
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two ball joints, one here and then one going into the steering knuckle right down here
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And then there is one bushing right over here. So if you have a bad bushing or you have a bad ball joint, you're going to want to go ahead
4:20
and replace the whole control arm. I always recommend the people to go ahead and do that
4:24
On newer BMWs, it's not really an issue because the control alarm style is different in the front
4:29
where you have to replace the whole control arm anyways. But in these older BMWs, you're going to have the option if you want to just replace the
4:36
bushing or not. I always say go ahead and replace the bushing because, or go ahead and replace the whole control arm
4:43
Because of the bushings out, your ball joints are probably going out as well
4:47
And you might as well go ahead and replace the sway bar link because you've got to remove it
4:51
anyways to replace this control arm. So here are two bad control arms that I'm changing on a Z4 BMW
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essentially the same as the U-36 or any other old BMW. So you got your two ball joints right here, and they have a lot of play in them
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You see all this play in the joints here, and then this one, this one's really gone
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They both have cracks in the joints. So these ball joints are gone on both of these control alarms
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And then we also have our main control arm bushing, which this
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This one is also shot. So you can see all the wiggle room this thing has
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And this one as well. So these are shot control alarms and symptoms you'll get from bad ball joints and bushings
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You'll get clunking noises when you break or when you're driving and turning
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You'll get steering wheel vibration and you'll get wandering on your steering wheel
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All these things are possible. bushings really go out you can get some loud clunking noises as well another really important component
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is your sway bar links which are right here you have a sway bar link on either end which is this
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which connects to your control arm up to the stabilizer bar slash sway bar and then you have a
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sway bar bushing right here now when these two go out they don't actually cause a whole lot of symptoms
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terms of drivability but they will tend to make when when I've seen sway bar links
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and sway bar bushings go out they make kind of a clunky noise a little bit
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but not a lot of difference in drivability and when these go out especially
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this bushing right here it tends to crack quite a bit now I replaced this
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bushing and the link about a year or two ago so as you can see this is a good
6:57
There's no cracks on the inside where the sway bar actually goes in
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And as you can see on the sway bar link this thing brand new The boots really nice There no movement in the link itself So these are good and they stiff So we don have a problem here
7:17
Your next big component is your tie rod. Your tie rod is actually two parts
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You have an inner tie rod, which is this portion right here, and it bolts into your outer tie rod here
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And your inner tie rod actually connects into your steering rack inside of this boot
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And your outer tie rod, which is the component that more frequently goes bad as right here
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That goes bad as right here. Now, as you can see, this outer tie rod has seen better days
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It's got a really big gash right here, unfortunately. So this outer tie rod could probably be replaced
8:00
This is a really big gash. And this is what happens as they wear
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They get these big gashes on them and they become, so this one I can't actually move around with my hand
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But when they go really bad, you can actually move around the outer tie rod by hand
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Here is a good example of a bad inner tie rod. You see all this movement here
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Look at it. Look at that thing. That thing is gone. There's actually a ball joint inside the inner tie rod
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and when it goes out, you get this, where there's absolutely no resistance
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Now, the outer tie rod here, I mean, it's on its way out
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I've seen worse, but I'm going to go ahead and change the whole thing here
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Here's your inner tie rod, and to most people, it just looks like a metal piece
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You're like, what's the problem here? But it actually has a ball joint inside of it that, as you can see
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There is a ton of wiggle room on this one. Now look at the new one
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None at all. It's extremely stiff. So another thing with your inner tie rod is you don't actually see the ball joint here
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when you're looking at your inner tie rod because it's inside of a boot
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your steering rack boot. And if your steering rack boot is full of liquid
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or it's got liquid coming out when you open up the boot. That is symptomatic of a different problem
9:42
That is actually going to be your steering rack itself. It has seals on either end of it when it goes into the inner tie rod
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And when those seals start to go out, it starts leaking out power steering fluid into the boot
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And that's when you'll get a boot full of steering fluid. Another thing to look out for, which I've had to replace before, is wheel bearings
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Your wheel bearings go inside of the hub here. They're basically a bunch of little metal balls that are held together by a ring on either end
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And they basically stabilize the wheel to allow the wheel to turn properly
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Wheel bearings are really a pain in the ass to replace when they go out
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I not a big fan of replacing them because especially the rear ones because you have the axle the actual CV axle that going through and you have to try and get it through And after many years of driving on that CV axle they tend to really really get stuck in there and I think last time I needed a torch
10:54
to get it out it's pain in the ass so anyways when wheel bearings go out you tend to notice when
11:00
you're turning you know you could be turning anywhere from like 10 20 30 miles an hour and making a
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sharp the the sharp of the turn is the more distinct the noise is
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going to be. It tends to be kind of a clunking sound, but that'll indicate that your wheel
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bearing is going out. A way to test that besides just listening to a noise that's being made
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when you turn is to take off your brake right here and actually spin the rotor. If it's not
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spinning freely and you hear a noise coming with the spin, you've probably got a bad wheel
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bearing. So here's something else that I just recently changed on the Z4. It's not really a suspension
11:45
component, but it can have some similar symptoms to a suspension problem, especially when you're
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hitting the brakes, and that is your brake rotor. So brake rotors tend to warp as they get as they
11:57
age. If you don't change them per the BMW's recommended intervals, it'll start to warp and it'll get too
12:04
thin and then when you break you'll get symptoms like your steering wheel will shake it might pull to the
12:10
side when you're braking and it might even make a loud you know loud screeching noise or some kind of
12:16
noise due to your brake warpage on this rotor the rotor was somewhat warped you can see some deep
12:23
gashes inside of it and there's a nice little lip on the brake rotor so these were probably ready to
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go and i went ahead and switched them and then another common issue with suspension
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that you might notice is your struts. The way I think about control arms and tie rod ends
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is that that's going to cause more side-to-side play. Your struts are often going to cause more vertical play
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And especially if you have an older vehicle, like these are E-36s
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These cars have been old for a long time now. When these struts go out
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it really feels like you're on a freaking trampoline or a bouncy boat
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like a trampoline or a boat or something like that. When you hit bumps, the car just bounces up and down, up and down
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And that's a clear indicator that your struts have gone out. When the car is bouncing like that, these struts have a gas inside
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And over time it escapes and eventually your strut will just go out and it'll stop actually
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it'll stop actually leveling the vehicle. And that's when you really need to change it
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Okay, so here you can see everything that I've done on this BMW Z4 recently
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I changed the control alarms. These things were out. The ball joints, the bushings were bad
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I've changed the enter tie rods, which were also bad. And I ended up changing the brake rotors because one of them was pretty warm
14:01
and had a nice lip on it, so I ended up changing both of those as well
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And the outer tie rods were, they weren't too bad, but I figured we'd go ahead and change them since I was changing the inner tire rods anyways
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I hope y'all enjoyed this video. If you did, please like and subscribe, because I'm going to be coming out with more
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Y'all have a going
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