Koni Yellow and Ground Control Adjustable Coilover (Eibach) Install DIY E46 BMW
Category
🤖
TechTranscript
00:00Hello! Good morning! So it seems like it's been a while since I've done a proper E46
00:06performance part review, so here we are. I'm going to show you how to install
00:10KONI Yellows and ground control springs in, as I call it, a mostly helpful DIY,
00:15because if you were to just use my DIYs, you probably wouldn't be able to figure
00:19it out. You have to have a little bit of your own knowledge and maybe do some
00:22your own research as you do it, and this one is no different. So I had initially
00:26planned on just doing the KONI Yellow and reviewing that, but then I got a
00:30really good deal on some ground control springs, so they went in too. So let's
00:35take a look quickly at how to install the rear shocks and the front shocks
00:40with the spring. Hi friends! So today we are going to do the KONI Yellow install
00:45on my E46 BMW. So I've got the KONIs here. I'm gonna do the rear shocks first. Okay, so it's
00:52fairly straightforward, actually, the rear shock. Make sure you get a new top
00:55mount for these, right, because the old one wears out. Mine's all rusted and
00:58crappy. I'll show you how to take it off in a minute. So we're gonna take the old
01:01shock out first. I know that I said that I was going to put these with stock
01:05springs. However, I got a really super good deal on these. Sorry guys. This is a
01:11ground control coilover kit, so I'm going to have adjustable ride height on the
01:17front and the back. I'm gonna do the shocks first, and depending on how I'm
01:20feeling and how lazy I am, I might take it for a ride in the rear anyway. Maybe.
01:25Unlikely. But we'll see how easy these are to go in. These are a pretty beat-up
01:28old pair, but I got them for a hilariously good deal. So this is what's
01:32going to be going in. So to remove the old shock, you have to take the
01:39carpeting out of the back of the car here. So pull this out. There's a piece of
01:42rubber there that needs to kind of... it covers the shock. Look back there. There
01:46is the top of the old shock, okay? So you want... there's two bolts, one here and one
01:51there on the other side, to remove that, and it drops straight out. And then down
01:55here, we've got just the one bolt on the bottom to take out. I would recommend
02:02hitting these with some PB Blaster or some penetrant. These are probably a
02:05little bit stuck. Okay, so this one here is 18 millimeters. Let's see how easily
02:13this comes off. Not easily is the answer. Breaker bar time. You will want to
02:27support this a little bit, just with a block of wood and a jack or something,
02:31because this will just kind of pop out. So I did that right before I dropped this
02:34thing right out of there, okay? Okay, and that is just a 13 millimeter socket. It
02:42takes the top bolts out really easy. All right, so I just realized an easy trick
02:48here. Instead of like doing the two wrench method here, when you get
02:52this out, to put like a little 6 there and a 16 on this, just leave it in here
02:56and tighten it up, and then use the position of it when it's locked in to
02:59break that top bolt, and then you're good to go. And it loosens right up, and you
03:02take this guy out, and it's easy to get the shock off of the shock mount. Okay, so
03:09when you assemble the new, this is the Koni right here, so with the bump stop on,
03:13just like that, it sits all the way down there. We get this little plate that I
03:16probably should have replaced because it's all rusty, but I'm too cheap, and
03:19we've got the washer that Koni gives you, which fits right there, which is a little
03:22spacer, okay? Then you put your, should be a new shock mount at least, on top. This
03:29is a Mile HD, Mile, Miley, Mile HD, I don't know. It's a little bit stronger than the
03:35stock one, but not as strong as they come. It's kind of in the middle,
03:38right? And then we put this little washer mount on top, going that direction like
03:44that, and then you put your washer on top, or your bolt on top, and this gets only
03:48torqued to 10 foot-pounds, so don't over torque that. You end up what I just did
03:52for the last 20 minutes, trying to get the old one off. So I found that the best
03:57way to adjust these is put it here like this, on your hip, grab the top, compress,
04:04and it's there. You can hold it, you can kind of feel it catch and click inside
04:09the shaft, and then turn all the way till it's tight. It won't go any further, and
04:16then I backed mine off one full half turn, so that should be somewhere in the
04:19middle of the damping range. It's almost pointless until I take it out and test
04:23it on the track to set it up anyway, because no idea where it's gonna be in
04:29reference to the front. What you should do is put a reinforcement plate, which
04:33goes inside the trunk on the top, to protect that the top part of your,
04:38the actual frame of your car, because that's a pretty weak point. I'm gonna do
04:43that eventually, I just, I couldn't get it in the order that I had, but it wouldn't
04:46take very long to swap it out, so I'm just gonna do that next chance that I
04:49get. Okay, after you've done your adjustment, you just have someone hold it
04:52up there, or kind of push it up yourself and support it. Tighten those bolts down
04:55to 21 foot-pounds on both sides, make sure everything's lined up and pretty,
04:58and then we'll do the bottom bolt. Okay, so then you replace this bolt right here,
05:03it is a 18 millimeter bolt, torque to 76 foot-pounds. When you get the wheel on
05:08and the car dropped, torque it, make sure that it's torqued then, don't torque it
05:12now, apparently, I've been told you're supposed to do that. Okay. Okay, so the
05:19front shocks, these are actually really easy to get off, all things considered.
05:23Once again, I'm not going to compress the springs, I am just going to remove the
05:28struts, and I'm going to take them to a place that's going to compress the
05:31springs for me, because the price that it costs to buy a good safe spring
05:35compressor kit is more than it is for me to just take them to a shop and have them
05:40do it, and I don't do it very often. If you happen to see my shorts, and they're
05:44incredibly short, they belong to my father in the 70s, so I'm not responsible
05:48for anything that may happen to you while you are looking at them. So this is
05:51pretty straightforward, here's the shock, here's your disc brake and the steering
05:55knuckle, it's underneath. Okay, so we're gonna remove the sway bar first. Now what
06:00I do is I jack up the steering knuckle just enough to take the weight and the
06:06pressure off the sway bar, but it's actually really easy to get out. If you
06:09fight with it, it's just, you can hammer it out, you can damage the threads, don't
06:13do that. Just raise this enough, and I'll show you what that looks like in just a
06:16second. Okay, so I use a little piece of wood like this, and I put it on the top
06:21of just any normal jack like this, and I'm just gonna jack it up to relieve
06:25some pressure on the sway bar. Just find a spot that makes sense to jack it up
06:32and don't damage anything. Okay, so just a little bit of pressure off, and then
06:41we're gonna break this bolt here. This might be harder for you, these are pretty
06:44new sway bar links, so I just put these in recently, so it's gonna come off easy
06:47for me. Once you have this bolt off, it'll be pretty apparent where you need to jack
07:04this to get the sway bar to pop out easily, and it's looking like for me I
07:10jacked it up just the right amount to get that link out. So that just slid
07:15right out like that. Sometimes if it's being torqued on the little ball joint
07:19in the sway bar, you can just kind of raise or lower the wheel a little bit,
07:22and that's that. Now, this is going to be your best friend, PB Blaster. I'm not
07:29getting paid for this, but this is literally the best stuff that I've found.
07:32Okay, so like the WD-40 penetrant isn't as good as this, this stuff works magic. I
07:40don't know how it works, it's unbelievable stuff. So take this and give
07:44it a hit on the main bolt that goes through the back of the steering knuckle
07:49holding the strut onto it.
08:04Okay, so that is the bolt there that you need to hit.
08:10All right, right there. There it is on the other side. Okay, hit those parts there,
08:18and while you're there, give this ring right here a nice hit. Okay, because that
08:24is going to be loosened, and that's what actually brings the strut out. Okay, so I
08:31did break a bolt on this, and then what I had to do is take it to a shop and get
08:36them to weld a little bolt to it and pull it out the other side, and that
08:42worked. So thankfully it wasn't fully seized in there and didn't have to be
08:44drilled out. So I did get the shock out, so all you pretty much have to do to get
08:48the shock out of here is to just remove that bolt, support this whole thing with
08:52something. I just used a ramp, and it's helpful if you have someone to
08:57help you do it, and then you remove the three bolts from the top of the strut,
09:00drop this down just enough that you're not resting on the brake line, but you
09:03can get it low enough to pop the strut tube out of there, and then your strut
09:08is free. Okay, now what you have to do with the KONI yellow shocks is that this
09:14is the, this is if you're not getting the proper ground control package for KONI,
09:18these are just the regular KONI shocks. You have to knock this spring perch off.
09:22I just use a rubber mallet and then just tap it off, and it's just pressed on
09:25there, and then you take your ground control spring seats, and you actually
09:30have to cut a piece, and this is a lot easier than it sounds. Let's go get a
09:34Dremel from your local store, and you cut a piece out of it so that it doesn't hit
09:39the sway bar attachment on the shock. So I just cut it enough that it
09:45just sits all the way down in here, so that's actually where the pressure is
09:50going to be pushed. If you don't cut this out, it'll actually sit like that on the
09:54sway bar attachment, and if you look there, it's not seated all the way. So
09:59this is what a nice cutout looks like, nice and basic. Don't make it come to a
10:02point, because then you can potentially split this under pressure. So do this and
10:07then just grind that down, sand it, everything's nice and smooth, and it will
10:10sit there nicely. If you get the proper KONI ground control shocks, this is a
10:14different design, so you don't have to do this. And now this is the actual spring
10:19seat here, so that just screws on nice and smooth. Now what I would do before
10:25you put the springs on and have it installed, take this screw out of here
10:30completely and put some copper anti-seize on it, and when you put it back
10:33in with the Allen key, do not tighten it very tightly, okay, because these are very
10:39well known. It's all over the internet. This screw here seizes, and then this
10:43spring perch is seized in place. I actually had to buy new spring perches
10:47from the kit that I bought that was used. I had to Dremel cut right through that
10:50bolt to actually get the spring perch off, so I had to buy new ones, okay. They're
10:55only about like 25 bucks, but if you live in Canada like me, with shipping duties,
10:58it ends up being about $5,000 by the time I get it to Canada. So the idea is
11:03is that keep, take good care of that. Do not crank that too tight. I'm gonna use
11:07some copper anti-seize to make sure that it doesn't seize in there. Make sure you
11:11seat the Allen key properly in that hole. You do not want to strip that. This is
11:15the biggest issue with the ground control things I have read about. So I'm
11:18gonna take this to a shop and get it properly installed. I've got my struts
11:23over there. You can see them lying on the ground. I'm going to have the ground
11:28control springs gonna go on. I'm gonna use my top strut hat, and then I'm gonna
11:33reinstall them back on my car. Okay, so back from the shop, got the coilover
11:39assembled. Now this is kind of weirding me out a little bit, the way that this
11:44all works. Okay, so apparently this is correct. This spring is loose. It didn't
11:50actually have to compress it. So when you sit the car down on the whole thing, it
11:54will compress and everything will be fine. So you have to make sure
11:58everything's lined up. I'm gonna start at this setting. Honestly, it's
12:02irrelevant where I put the ride height. This is gonna be wrong for corner
12:05balancing. So I'm gonna get a proper alignment and a corner balance so that I
12:11can make sure that everything's properly set up for the track. I don't know if
12:14I'm gonna be able to do that in time for my next autocross, so that could be hilarious.
12:17But I can't stress this enough. If you're going to do coilovers, the purpose of
12:22coilovers is not to slam your car. I mean, you can use it for that, but if you're
12:26gonna be driving the car aggressively on the track or whatever, the purpose of it
12:30is so that you can corner balance the car properly. So you can get it set up
12:35with an alignment at a proper racing shop and have them put the same weight at
12:39all four corners. Okay, so you'd like sit in the car and then go around and take
12:43the wheels off, lower the car, measure it with scales on all four wheels,
12:46make sure that it's balanced up properly. That's the purpose of this, right? So
12:51we'll see how this works. So it's just the ground control collar, the ground control top,
12:55and then this is the stock bearing from my my shocks, which turns out are
13:00actually in really good shape, which is cool. But we'll see how much of a
13:04difference these actually end up making. I'm interested to see. I think that he
13:10installed this bump stop upside down. I'm looking at that. Yeah. Okay, so
13:15hopefully this works. I'm gonna install these in the car right now.
13:18Installation is just the same as removal, honestly. The way that I do it is I'm
13:22gonna lower the steering knuckle down enough that you can kind of, well, so put
13:26this up towards the spot where it mounts underneath the the strut mount
13:31underneath the hood first, and then kind of drop the knuckle down far enough, not
13:34putting any pressure on the brake lines. Slot it in, raise it up, make sure you get
13:39it all the way up, and then tighten up the steering knuckle, and tighten up
13:42these, install the sway bar, and you're good to go. Okay, so let's put these in
13:48now. So this is the end result of installing my ground control coilover
13:58springs. I set them somewhere up in the middle of the range, so as you can see
14:04it's actually not any lower than the stock sport suspension. So basically I
14:10need to lower these down and get a proper corner balance and alignment. Now
14:17I'm not going to show you how to install the rear spring for a couple reasons. One,
14:23I don't like the way that I did it. I didn't find it very safe, so I don't want
14:27to promote that. I used the the jack inside the back of the car to actually
14:33push down the control arm to be able to get the old spring out, which didn't seem
14:38safe, so I don't want to show you how to do that. And the ground control collar
14:44that I had was modified. It was the previous owner laser-cut a plate to
14:49support it, and so it's not actually the same as a regular ground control kit
14:53anyway. So there are instructions online. There's some DIYs on E46 Fanatics
14:57about how to install that, or you can actually just call ground control.
15:01They're super helpful. I called them a couple times, and they walked me through
15:05steps, and I gave them part numbers, and they told me that everything was okay.
15:08One thing you'll notice if you do this yourself is that the springs are very
15:12weird. When you don't have them compressed and the car isn't sitting
15:15down, the spring will be loose and it won't be lined up. It'll
15:19look kind of awkward, and I was worried about it. But when I lowered the car down,
15:23everything settled. You kind of heard one little thunk, and then everything sat
15:26into place, and now it's riding perfectly. I took it for a quick ride, and the
15:30results are awesome. So I'm going to do a proper review on the
15:34autocross course and on the track to show you what the difference is. I am
15:39going to lower it a little bit further than this. As I said, I've got these
15:42somewhere set in the middle, so I think when I switch my tires out, I think I
15:48might lower them both down a little bit and try and keep the same rake back to
15:52front until I can get a corner balance. As I said, it is absolutely pointless to
15:56try and set this up yourself, because unless you have four scales and you can
15:59do a corner balance, you're not going to get it dialed in properly. And that is
16:03the purpose of coilovers again, right? It's to lower the car, lower the center
16:06of gravity, and be able to balance the car properly. It's not just to slam the
16:09car. So I'll lower these down so you guys can see what it looks like. I don't think
16:14that they're going to go that much lower than this. They will be lower than the
16:16stock sport suspension, but they're not going to be that much lower than the
16:21stock sport suspension. I don't think that I could slam the car
16:25with this particular coilover setup. They just won't go that low, especially with
16:29the modification I made to the front perch. So let's take a look at what it's like on
16:33the road.