21 April 2009. Blog entry by Bimmerman.

I have been driving my car on stock suspension for about 3 years and have now decided that it is time to lower the car. Since one of the front absorbers has a slight leak, I have decided that it was best to replace both springs and absorbers at the same time. The choice for lowered springs was easy because of the popularity of Eibach – mainly due to marketing and the easy of Eibach springs. For absorbers, there was no doubt that it is going to be Bilstein as they have been widely and favourably reviewed in magazines and forums on the Internet. The only decision to be made was whether it is going to be Bilstein Touring (black coloured) or Bilstein Sports (yellow coloured). I decided on the Bilstein Touring mainly because most of the comments indicate that Bilstein Sports absorbers are really stiff and the ride quality would be quite harsh. This combination will need to last me at least one year. Now, the car has a nice lowered stance but the ride quality is too bouncy. In hindsight, I should have bought the Bilstein Sport as they were designed for lowered springs and would have been a better match with the Eibach Pro Kit.

 

5 April 2009. Blog entry by Bimmerman.

I have now upgraded the engine of my BMW. My preferred engine upgrade was a 2.5 liter Vanos engine transplant. I believe 2.5 liters is the minimum needed to provide the e34 the drive it requires given the weight of the car. However, in order to upgrade the engine from the 2.0 liter non-Vanos to the 2.5 liter Vanos engine, more parts would be required and the labour needed would be more extensive.

With the amount spent on the car stereo, I didn’t have sufficient budget left for a 2.5 liter Vanos engine transplant. The alternate route to 2.5 liter power would be replacing the engine with the 2.5 liter non-Vanos engine. It is a more straight-forward swap and also, used non-Vanos long blocks are cheaper due to the lower demand compared to used Vanos engines. In addition, the non-Vanos m50 engines are said to be quite robust. I guess without Vanos, there’s one less thing that can go wrong. Once that was decided, the mechanic at my regular workshop helped to source for the engine and did the swap. I am satisfied with the increased power although more would definitely be better. That will have to wait until my budget recovers.