Just join BMWCCA. I have been an Audi fan for several years. I recently got my first BMW E39. It got a suspension issue. I would like to seek advice on this forum. thanks, So my car is 2003 E39 540iM sport 128K miles. No previous accidents that I know. No visible body repair on car. I think the body is straight. the car drives fine no shaking, vibration. Replaced two rear tires on Friday (Nov 21). I realize the left rear tire had a very bad worn spot. I am a DIYer (valley pan, CV gasket, clutch etc), but I decided to take my car to BMW dealer for an alignment which I believe they should have the right tool and procedures to make it right. The service adviser called me back and told me the rear left wheelcannot be adjusted into the alignment spec both camber and toe. (too much camber and too much toe in on the car). All other three wheels can be adjusted into specs. He thinks that control arms, wishbone, or spindle (unexpected) are bad due to an impact. Technician cannot identify which one is bad. So they suggested to change all of them ($1500~2000). They also told me that if replacing those doesn't fix the problem. I would need to replace the sub frame. So obviously, the car needs some repair. I would like to see your opinion on it. Have you heard of similar rear suspension issue before? Personally, I don't think the spindle needs to be replaced. If I let dealer to fix it, what should I let them replace? All the arms or include spindle? the picture is the car's old rear left tire and the car's rear suspension when I replaced the clutch. The rear right and front right tires look normal. The rear left is showed in the picture. The front left has some feathering.
BMW's have lots of rubber suspension bushings, and those eventually wear & require replacement. E39 rear suspension design is different from earlier BMW's I'm more familiar with, but with a plethora of rubber suspension parts, it may be that you just have some combination of bushings that are far enough worn so that things can't be aligned back into spec - I'm not sure if there's all that much adjustability in the first place. Charlson is a BMW Tech, he'll know more about those specifics than I do for your model. Even though those might appear to be pretty beefy parts, they might be more easily bent than suspected, as the lower trailing arm and axle-carrier assemblies are not solid, but stampings/tubular, for weight savings. Damage is possible, inexperienced drivers in rear-wheel-drive vehicles can certainly get into a slide and not have the skill set to recover the skid, so maybe something happened like the back end went sideways into a curb. But, yes, you'd think there'd be more obvious evidence of damage. I don't know how much of a hassle it is to work on E39 rear suspensions, but I suspect if you're a determined d-i-y'er, you could do much of the job, but I think presses are needed for installing/removing any variety of the bushings - if you have time to get into it, that is - disassembling a majority of the rear suspension would be time-consuming enough that it's not a quick job. But, you'd get to eyeball all suspicious parts & bushings. Diagnosis is always the issue with stuff like this - relatively, it's not the worst case to replace bushings, ball joints, etc - but, IF something like the subframe or trailing arm is bent and you go to all the hassle of pulling, replacing bushings, and reinstalling, only to have to do it all again because it was bent subframe and not a bushing issue... that's a lot of work for a misdiagnosis, or, if you go to that expense following the dealers recommendations and it still doesn't fix it... frustrating, and expensive! Hmmm - not sure what to tell you - would also suck to do a bunch of work yourself, pay for another alignment, only to find out the first round of attempts didn't resolve the issue. Except for the split to the steel belts, that looks like a fairly normal rear-tire wear pattern to me, for a tire that's never been rotated - for a stock BMW which typically has zero degrees neg. front camber vs. some neg. rear camber, running the same size tires all around allow for 4-5k tire rotations front/back to even out the wear. Otherwise, maximizing tire life for staggered front/rear sizes means dismounting the rears & having a tire shop flip them on the rims so the former inside edge will be the outer edge. At your mileage, you may not be that far off from some of the front suspension parts/bushings also needing replacement. Here's realoem.com parts diagrams for rear suspension of a 2002 E39 540i, you may want to start at the beginning for the correct production month. http://www.realoem.com/bmw/partgrp.do?model=DN63&mospid=47588&hg=33&fg=30 If the work gets into removing the rear drive axles, then the rear spindles can be easily spun, which might allow for easier assessment of the wheel bearing; it may be that accessing the wheel bearing involves 90% of what they're suggesting, so perhaps just replacing it while in there is a labor-saver later. I guess one question is, how far out of spec is it, and what's the likelihood a bushing or any combination thereof might be the reason for not being able to be aligned, vs. something bent being a more likely reason?
Hi MGarrison, Thanks a lot for your inputs. I emailed Charlson and got his reply. The dealer will email me a quote and depending on the price. I will decide if I will go to another specialist or replace the arms by myself. I have owned Audi A4 for 7 years. I replaced the full front control arms before. So I guess the degree of difficulty should be similar. Aggieshan Here is what he said in the email. I do see this from pot holes here in omaha a lot. The problem is you can never tell what exactly is bent on the vehicle since control arms are designed in such weird shapes anyway. And if they are bent most the time it is off so slightly that you can’t see it with the human eye. The issues is if you let the dealer do it they will like you said wanna replace the whole side when it could be just the one part doing it. I would suggest two things first is you may wanna have the alignment checked by another place to make sure there readings fit with what the dealer gave you. Second since you like to do it yourself replace some of the components and have some one try to align it for you. But if you do decide to do it one part at a time you would have to pay for an alignment for each part replaced and that gets expensive. Hard to say about the subframe but most the time it is ok I haven’t had to replace one yet and I have had some cars hit really bad. Hope this helps.
Update: I read the alignment report carefully and took the report to an INDY shop which has good reputation. It turns out that BMW dealer measured my rear left wheel wrongly. Although my picture of the tire shows inner side wear, the reading from the report before alignment is +1.4. So I took my car back to dealer and asked the service adviser. He directed me to the shop foreman. He agreed that they messed up the alignment job and offer to fix it. In the afternoon, I got a phone call from them. I was told that the alignment machine they used (Hunter) was out of calibrate for my E39 only (Other models are fine on that machine). They took my car to another machine and got the car properly aligned. In the end, I talked to their manager and discussed the seriousness of this careless workmanship. They apologized what has happened and offered me a full refund for the alignment.
Good catch, kudos for giving it a 2nd look - wouldn't have expected an issue from their alignment machine!