So as has been highlighted by the sale of the Birds suspension I decided to go Ohlins R&T instead. Bought from Italy due to an excellent price from a friend over there, but with a worldwide warranty it was too good to pass up.
I'll give a review later but firstly onto the swap.
All I can say is every detail by Ohlins is spot on. Even the way they package it all up for delivery. I've modded all my cars (and there have been a fair few) so have bought a hell of a lot of bits and the attention to detail was duly noted with these compared to anything else purchased.
Collected a large box from DHL:
When you open it you see a tightly packaged and bubble wrapped Ohlins box:
2 different sized boxes but only by depth:
Everything is nicely packaged in the boxes with springs and rear spring perches in the smaller box and the shocks themselves in the larger:
So there it all is laid out to ensure everything was present:
The damping adjusters for the fronts are located on the bottom and the rears on the top:
And a lovely set of springs:
So then onto the removal of the Birds kit. Started with the fronts first as they tend to be the easiest. Heres the Birds front setup in situ:
To remove the front shock/spring setup I'd normally just compress the springs using the compressors and undo the bolt that holds the lower shock mount in place and slide it out but for some reason it was not playing ball so decided to just remove the hub instead. Here it removed with the hub:
I could have shown the breakdown of the kit as you need to re-use the top mount and bearing spacer for the Ohlins setup, but tbh I started the job at 5pm in the evening so didn't want to keep stopping to take pics (sorry). But here is the front Ohlins setup in place:
The nearside front was an easier affair without the need to remove the hub. So it was on to the rear. Rear setup is a separate damper and spring arrangement like pretty much all OE BMW applications:\
Remove the shock first which is just a nut at either end and compress to squeeze it out. Then it's easiest to actually remove the long bolt/nut that holds the lower spring arm in place to get the spring out. You need to re-use the shocker rubber bushes that hold the shock in place as it goes through the suspension turret into the boot. For the spring nothing is retained from the Birds kit as the Ohlins spring perches for both upper (adjustable) and lower (fixed) are provided.
So basically do the reverse to put the Ohlins kit in and here it is in place:
Once all bolted back in place I needed to drill out the hole in the side boot carpet panels to feed the adjuster through. Holiness provide full measurements and diagrams as to where to make the hole which is spot on. Adjuster in place:
And that's it. I finished at 4:30am due to wanting to get it all in place properly and neatly and tidying up the garage after lol.
Heres a before shot on the Birds setup which tbh I did love the stance:
I set the Ohlins to what they recommend on both height and damping:
Nicely it is only very marginally higher at the front but it's enough to not cause any issues with speed humps but the rear certainly looks higher than before.
Very pleased with it for sure.
Thanks,
Raj