Lessons learned PART 2:
Now where was I? Ah yes, #11
step 0/ start with prayer. Not kidding.
11/ it's a bit of a recap but again I'll talk about replacement fasteners. The front lower bolt strut fork to wishbone. It's pretty meaty and TIS specs 66lt-lb to joint plus 180 degrees. Again, I had the biggest breaker bar HF sells and this got tough after 90 degrees. I did not get completely to 180 degrees without something in my brain telling me "that's enough".
12/ It's important to note that torquing in NORMAL position is required for both upper wishbone bolts and the lower fork bolt.
13/ Be careful of the height sensor in the LF. There are multiple ways this could be taken apart and disconnected. I ended up disconnecting the metal attachment from the plastic sensor arm. This was the path of least resistance with the salt corrosion present and allowed the sensor arm to fall flat against the body of the car and be the most out of the way. It's one 10mm nut.
14/ Strut tops/hats - they're aluminum and come with no threads. The first time the single use bolts are threaded in they cut new threads. I was working alone with no helper for alignment of strut tops front or rear. I held the new struts up in place with one hand and threaded a new bolt in just a turn or two.
15/ Front reassembly I figured made sense - a/ get the strut mostly in position b/ insert the bolt only in the strut fork/wishbone to get some control over where the strut flops c/ line up the hats in the towers and hand thread a turn or two of the new bolts d/ with them hanging perform any rotation necessary to perfectly center e/ check everything f/ start inserting upper wishbone bolts - front slides in, rear will have to turn in a couple of turns g/ check everything h/ you may or may not have to pull the strut top bolts again to allow the strut to move more to drive the upper wishbone fasteners i/ if you removed them, get the top bolts threaded in a couple of turns again j/ raise suspension to normal position k/ fool around with all the crap you need to do to get proper torque on the wishbone l/ call Hercules to fasten the lower bolt m/ get your hand tools and nicely switch evenly between the three strut top bolts until tight, torque precisely n/ lower suspension.
16/ For sensor and other lines I only had to pull them from their guides, I didn't have to outright disconnect any. Don't forget to reattach them to their guides and hook up the height sensor again.
17/ If you don't have an 18mm spanner I found I really could have used one in a few places to make things easier. I forgot I had an offset box wrench in 18mm until the end of the job, they weren't with the rest of my tools yet.
18/ put protection on your fender lip. I had three layers of masking tape. Some of the parts you're wrestling with are heavy, have sharp edges and inertia. It wouldn't take much of a "slip" to have nasty cosmetic damage.
I'm not sure that I've completely escaped collateral damage. I hope my front CV joints are OK and that there was no route for diff fluid to escape into the joint. (I don't believe so).
Impressions: I've only been on a 10-15 minute drive and the start of that was very cautious and close to my home listening and feeling for anything out of the ordinary.
It's firmer, but I still think I'm acting my age. I have about 1 finger of fender gap and will fine tune that a little. I sensed I needed an alignment before but now I can't even tell. I think having dive, squat and roll more under control means things don't get out of shape as easily.
I took a couple of reasonably well known routes where undulations or whatever would cause mid-corner corrections, porpoising, bump steer and all that - all gone. For instance I can again (like on my E90 and E39) come into a quick left hander, spot my apex, spot the leading edge of the road median on exit, roll on the power before arriving there and track exactly where I intended.
I was observing that despite being ridiculously soft, on my summer rubber I was noticing cracks and broken pavement felt really harsh. That's improved now despite the extra firmness. No "crashing" over stuff just "oh there it is".
Steering maybe feels a little heavier and more direct. It turns in faster, even though that doesn't make a tons of sense. It's still numb, but that's the good ol' F10. I wonder if bushing mods to increase caster would change that any.
Dive and squat is very noticeably reduced, but not gone like some youtubers seem to show. It's much better and gives me more confidence on the brakes for sure. I'm sure it helps that the alignment isn't changing so much during heavy braking too. It's now much easier to confidently put power down and feel like things are going just how you want them drama-free. Stock suspension, not so much since installing MHD.
So - pretty great so far. My F10 now deserves to wear the PS4S I've put on it, IMO.
For sway bars I was getting so tired at the end of the job I left them alone. I was thinking of swapping to the factory front bar since I had the front off anyways but I didn't want to go to the back and start taking things apart to swap it to either factory or 650i rear bar too. I remember the rear bar being a struggle to get in/out around the suspension.
I've got no problem with the stiffness of the bars at the moment. As a matter of fact, it works better. On the stock suspension with upgraded bars the chassis is all over the place and you can feel where the bars are working and actually bounce or oscillate. So far with the coilovers keeping the body more in control the negative side effects of stiffer bars don't show as much. (In the whole 15 minutes I was out anyways)
