E36 Front Control Arm (removal/installation)

[fabrikator]

Noticed a shimmy cornering right so I parked and lifted my 318ti front and turned tires to the right and pulled on the tire- sure enough, slop in the inner ball joint. Ordered a new control arm through BMP with the ball joints already installed thinking I could by-pass some labor. Well...

As suspected the part came with no removal/installation instructions. I've failed to find anything on line either.

Help.

So... any info as to how one can properly remove the control arm bracket (outside of strut and engine brace removal) would be much appreciated. The outer is a tapered shaft going into the spindle, the inner seems to be non-tapered. (BTW- yes, I've tried a soft dead-blow hammer and things are not budging) Torque settings are also needed. Apparently a new bushing is suggested. I may try to salvage the old.

Thanks.

Fabrikator
1995 318ti
1999 Silverado Z-71
1985 S-10 (V8)

[venzon]

Not sure if the link below will help you. It's for 318i. Good Luck!

http://zoso.no-ip.org/318i-control-arm.html

[Dudesky_E36]

^^^That's perfect, they're identical, even on an E30 3 series. And keep banging on it- they're a pain, but they'll pop off. There's only one thing that article missed. Before you remove the control arm bushings, measure the distance between the bushing and the stop shoulder on the end of the arm (shown in photo below). Maintain that distance when installing the new bushings, or your lollipop bolts won't line up with the chassis. If you've gotten this far, you'll have noticed that you can't salvage the old bushings- they get damaged once you pull them off. Heed the warning about getting the install done quickly and getting the car back down on the ground . . ideally, you should perform this inside 30min or so, or the bushings will set up wrong. Let it sit for 2-3hrs before driving again. Wheel alignment won't be necessary unless you used M3 bushings.



Torque Specs:
Inner ball joint: 62 ft-lb
Outer ball joint: 48 ft-lb
Control arm bracket (lollipop) bolts: 34 ft-lb
Stabilizer bar link: 31 ft-lb

For a better article on control arm bushings:
http://www.understeer.com/lcab.shtml

[fabrikator]

I've tried the link (http://zoso.no-ip.org/318i-control-arm.html) but can't get the page... maybe it's my computer here at work. I'll try it later in the day and/or at home this evening. From what Dudesky replied about the page- it's probably what I'm looking for.

The link to http://www.understeer.com/lcab.shtml looks to be right on as well. That's even a '97 ti they are working on. Torque specs too, sweet.

Thank you both for helping. Any additional posts are welcome. I'll post here when I've tackled the job to let anyone interested how things went. Right now I've got to order a new bushing.

[Dudesky_E36]

If that link doesn't work, here's another article:

http://www.pelicanparts.com/BMW/tech...eplacement.htm

Good luck, let us know how it turns out

[fabrikator]

Thanks for the additional web site (pelican site). I got the other site to pop up on this computer as well. Looks like good info. Thanks!

[fabrikator]

Update:

Used the info you all provided, info on the websites provided, ordered parts through BMP and Bavarian and got to work on Sunday. The job took about 5 hours (with lunch).

I thought the bushing was going to be the hard part. Turns out just removing the stubborn control arm was the most difficult. It started off with a rubber mallet, then a weighted dead-blow and eventually a small short-handled steel sledge hammer. Keeping the hammer off the spindle (and everything else) a couple of realy good whacks broke it loose. BTW: I do not reccommend this method to anyone- it was my a last resort and was quite stressful.

The remainder of disassembly went well as did assembly using tips from the forum and webpages.

Torque settings were helpful for the ball-joints but without removing the strut on one end and the engine for the center (ok, maybe not the whole engine), there didn't seem to be a way to get a torque wrench in there (thought there were failed attempts at snaking an extention and series of knuckes through the engine compartments for the middle locknut). A less than scientific approach was to "tighten it enough to be tight... but not too tight".

I bring this up because I'm curious as to how anyone may have performed this without removing the strut or many of the items bolted to and around the engine.

In any event, the car is back on the road and handles extremely well- no more shakes, rattles or uncertainty when cornering. All in all it was a bit of work but it was accomplished with help from this forum.

THANK YOU ALL FOR HELPING!

Lata.