Opinions on Poly VS OEM and check my suspension refresh list please

[sillieidiot]

Your post is way too long lol I'm too lazy to read right now so I'll answer what I can remember LOL

Why did you get charged $575? Was it because of all the adjustments that you did? That's why I told you to DIY those lol Save money, and you could still drive around while figuring out everything before the alignment.

For the rebound adjustment. Like I told you, it doesn't do anything to make it feel softer. All it's going to adjust is how bouncy your car feels. I believe in that other thread you linked, Mfactory says that they don't touch the damping at all. So it should feel pretty much the same compression throughout the whole range when you adjust it. In which you already noticed as you played around with it. The reason why it felt a little better as you went harder was because you made it less bouncy.

The front height adjustment. For these types of coilovers, you need to lengthen the shocks using that bottom collar, not the one on bottom of the springs. He must not be used to or seen these types of coilovers before.

For the endlinks, did the guy not use an allen wrench to keep the nut from spinning the shaft? You can't hold the back. Hmm there's no facepalm smiley on this forum apparently. It would go good here. I wouldn't go back to that guy lol

Ok, that's all I remember lol I remember you saying something about adjustment bolt in the rear. Well technically he's right in that you adjust 1 bolt for the camber. But he still needs to adjust toe. Toe is more important than camber for tire wear.

Raising the height overall will help improve the quality because you will be increasing the suspension travel. But you can only go so much.

[Kimber]

Your post is way too long lol I'm too lazy to read right now so I'll answer what I can remember LOL

Why did you get charged $575? Was it because of all the adjustments that you did? That's why I told you to DIY those lol Save money, and you could still drive around while figuring out everything before the alignment.

For the rebound adjustment. Like I told you, it doesn't do anything to make it feel softer. All it's going to adjust is how bouncy your car feels. I believe in that other thread you linked, Mfactory says that they don't touch the damping at all. So it should feel pretty much the same compression throughout the whole range when you adjust it. In which you already noticed as you played around with it. The reason why it felt a little better as you went harder was because you made it less bouncy.

The front height adjustment. For these types of coilovers, you need to lengthen the shocks using that bottom collar, not the one on bottom of the springs. He must not be used to or seen these types of coilovers before.

For the endlinks, did the guy not use an allen wrench to keep the nut from spinning the shaft? You can't hold the back. Hmm there's no facepalm smiley on this forum apparently. It would go good here. I wouldn't go back to that guy lol

Ok, that's all I remember lol I remember you saying something about adjustment bolt in the rear. Well technically he's right in that you adjust 1 bolt for the camber. But he still needs to adjust toe. Toe is more important than camber for tire wear.

Raising the height overall will help improve the quality because you will be increasing the suspension travel. But you can only go so much.

Yeah please read the whole thing when you have time, I appreciate your thoughts.

Yeah I drove it like you said, but I do not have a garage or a lift so my mechanic said this guy is good alignment guy so just let him do the adjustments and then the alignment. He was told it would be like $150-200, and I was good with that (but not 575). But like you said this guy either doesn't know these type or is screwing me over, because it took him 3.5 hours to adjust ride height and it's all messed up and not done correctly.

Slater had some thoughts that he emailed me and the jist was that everything is way too short. The shock probably is compressed in the assembly and can't even do it's job. I happen to still have my old ones here still (rears are both basically blown) , so I went out and measured them and the rear stock springs are like 4" taller than the ones from YCW. And the stock front are like 23" long. I am pretty sure that when we installed them we put them at about 19" with the lower collar. (and today jerk off wouldn't move that one, he said he can do it with the top collar)

So I know YCW said they will design and send a new rear perch with more threads so the collar can go up higher, but I just can't see it working when the factory is 4" taller spring. Or what am I missing?

To be honest there was no instrauctions or guidelines for install, and I don't understand why YCW wouldn't put the shocks at least close to where they should be. This could all have been avoided if you ask me. Just saying.

[MFactory]

They charged you $575 for alignment? Alignment should only take 1hr max, and that's the old fashioned (and best) way with strings and corner weights.

I also have to apologise for the lack of install instructions on the initial test sets; the reason for this is because we needed to wait on feedback from our testers before we can put together the complete instructions for the production sets.

Our dampers are rebound only adjustment (compression does change very slightly, but not significantly) and only affects low speed damping, so changing them only really affects how "bouncy" your car will be as sillieidiot mentioned above and not the actual stiffness (for comparison purposes though, we try to keep the rebound/compression ratio as close to 1:1.1 as possible at max. damper speeds, which comes on very quickly due to the digressive valving)

For the rear adjustment, I have to apologise; I forgot that the E46 fitment uses an inline adjustment knob instead of at the end of the rod (like it is with our E9X fitments). As long as you follow the S-H marking, you are fine.

For the actual shock length (not damper length, as that remains static), these are set the way they are to fit the packaging. When installing, generally you should adjust the mount so that the shock length is the same as (or as close as) the oem shock length. You would then mount the shock/damper while at full droop, pre-load the spring slightly (just so that it doesn't move. You don't need too much pre-load), then do final adjustment from there depending on how much travel and height you require. All of the dampers have bump stops (they are underneath the rod boots). We made the rears adjustable via the mounts to avoid the conflicts associated with adjusting via the spring perch (e.g reduced spring stroke). The reason for offering the longer thread on the rear is so that you can actually lengthen the shock length more to adjust the ride height that way vs the conventional spring perch method, and thus compensate for the increased length and not have the spring mounted loose.

Obviously, this is just the general way to setup the dampers, but are fully adjustable depending on your requirements.

As for the spring lengths, these are shorter than stock, yes, but because they are also stiffer, they won't compress as much as the oem springs under weight. If we made them the same length as the oem springs, you would be riding higher than oem.

If you give me the permission, I can give your contact details to our other E46 tester (albeit his is an M3) who has successfully installed and using the coilovers. Stiffer, yes (as expected), but definitely not uncomfortable.

[Kimber]

For the endlinks, did the guy not use an allen wrench to keep the nut from spinning the shaft? You can't hold the back. Hmm there's no facepalm smiley on this forum apparently. It would go good here. I wouldn't go back to that guy lol

Ok, that's all I remember lol I remember you saying something about adjustment bolt in the rear. Well technically he's right in that you adjust 1 bolt for the camber. But he still needs to adjust toe. Toe is more important than camber for tire wear.

Raising the height overall will help improve the quality because you will be increasing the suspension travel. But you can only go so much.

I forgot to write in, yes he tried the allen first, and then even the lock pliers just because he couldn't understand why the nut would just spin and not come on or off. It's like the internals are bad and just spin around.

And for the alignment, if shocks are all too short (thus the car is too low) will that help get the toe to where it should be? (allowing our one adjustment bolt in the rear to get it to where it should be)

And are you saying that we don't care much for what the camber is in the rear, we want the toe to be right no matter what? And that toe should be .12 per side if I remember correctly from the screen (but he said that the machine doesn't actually register that small on the screen, just in 5's so it would either be .10 or .15 on the screen, but he tries to get the middle)

And my rear camber is not the same per side according the screen shot above. Does that matter?

How about the front camber, he said for daily driving that having it around -.50 is better overall. But I noticed that most of the guys in the alignment thread have theirs at like -1.00.

Thanks!

[sillieidiot]

Yeah please read the whole thing when you have time, I appreciate your thoughts.

Yeah I drove it like you said, but I do not have a garage or a lift so my mechanic said this guy is good alignment guy so just let him do the adjustments and then the alignment. He was told it would be like $150-200, and I was good with that (but not 575). But like you said this guy either doesn't know these type or is screwing me over, because it took him 3.5 hours to adjust ride height and it's all messed up and not done correctly.

Slater had some thoughts that he emailed me and the jist was that everything is way too short. The shock probably is compressed in the assembly and can't even do it's job. I happen to still have my old ones here still (rears are both basically blown) , so I went out and measured them and the rear stock springs are like 4" taller than the ones from YCW. And the stock front are like 23" long. I am pretty sure that when we installed them we put them at about 19" with the lower collar. (and today jerk off wouldn't move that one, he said he can do it with the top collar)

So I know YCW said they will design and send a new rear perch with more threads so the collar can go up higher, but I just can't see it working when the factory is 4" taller spring. Or what am I missing?

To be honest there was no instrauctions or guidelines for install, and I don't understand why YCW wouldn't put the shocks at least close to where they should be. This could all have been avoided if you ask me. Just saying.

Well I wen't back and read the whole thing. But I guess I didn't really miss anything lol

So do you have tools? Like jacks and stands? That's all you really need to adjust the suspension. And obviously the wrenches that were provided. You should find a way to do that, because you will probably be doing a lot of adjustments before you will find something that you're comfortable with. It's basically trial an error since not everyone drives the same roads and stuff as you.

Yeah don't mind about the springs being shorter and stuff. They are different spring rates so it doesn't matter all that much. Plus the springs you have are also sitting on the mount. You have to include the height of the mount too.

I forgot to write in, yes he tried the allen first, and then even the lock pliers just because he couldn't understand why the nut would just spin and not come on or off. It's like the internals are bad and just spin around.

And for the alignment, if shocks are all too short (thus the car is too low) will that help get the toe to where it should be? (allowing our one adjustment bolt in the rear to get it to where it should be)

And are you saying that we don't care much for what the camber is in the rear, we want the toe to be right no matter what? And that toe should be .12 per side if I remember correctly from the screen (but he said that the machine doesn't actually register that small on the screen, just in 5's so it would either be .10 or .15 on the screen, but he tries to get the middle)

And my rear camber is not the same per side according the screen shot above. Does that matter?

How about the front camber, he said for daily driving that having it around -.50 is better overall. But I noticed that most of the guys in the alignment thread have theirs at like -1.00.

Thanks!

Yeah that doesn't make sense to me lol But ok, let's just say it's bad somehow. I guess he stripped the threads so whatever. You'll need a new endlink regardless.

To adjust toe in the rear, he actually has to loosen like all the bolts near the RTABs and move that. The only one where there is only a single bolt is the camber because it uses an offset bolt. Adjusting the camber will adjust the toe a bit, but you need to do the ones by the RTAB.

Making the car higher will make it easier to get the toe/camber to where it should be.

When I last saw your alignment sheet. He didn't even adjust the rear toe at all.

No it doesn't matter, as long as it's within spec then it's fine.

For the camber, it's really preference tbh. Having more means you have better turning, but less grip on the straights. I would just stick to trying to get as close to stock specs as possible.


BTW, chill lol Woosah woosah We'll get this fixed, one step at a time.

[sillieidiot]

They charged you $575 for alignment? Alignment should only take 1hr max, and that's the old fashioned (and best) way with strings and corner weights.

I think he was charged the labor for adjusting the height and stuff. Comes out to like $164ish / hour. Which is a lot imo, that's like what a tuning shop would charge.

Do you know what spring rates you gave him?

[MFactory]

Yeah, he mentioned in the email. His alignment guy charged him 3.5hrs to adjust the height, and still wasn't done right

I believe they were the same 4K/12K, but I'll need to double verify.

I think the issue though is with the shock length i.e too short, thus reducing overall height and compressing the spring too much, not allowing any travel

[Kimber]

Update!!

After talking with YCW multiple times to make sure I have everything correct the car is going back in on Monday and the shop is going to make everything right for no charge. They are going to fit it in between cars and whatnot, so I told them to keep it all week if need be.

The consensus was that the shocks were just not long enough, so everything was compressed, giving the harsh ride. (probably hitting the bump stops all the time) The shop is going to lengthen everything properly now as YCW explained and hopefully we will be in business then!!

YCW has been great with communication and explaining everything to me, as I have no clue on this stuff. (now I do though! LOL) I really appreciate the customer service and thank Michael at YCW immensely!!

So I will keep you guys updated as I get any new info. Thanks for everyone's thoughts and help!

[BMWCurves]

Glad to hear YCW was responsive and the shop is being accommodating! Hopefully it's all smooth sailing from there on

[ELCID86]

Keep us posted Bryan.