Subframe and Steering Reinforcement FAQ
Posted: May 26, 2009 4:40 AM
This FAQ has been moved to the Wiki: Subframe and Steering Reinforcement - The E28 Wiki
BMW E28 5 Series Enthusiast Community
https://forums.mye28.com/
Definition: When your 3rd grade teacher smacks you on the hand for shooting pencils at the ceiling with ruler & rubber band setup.Shawn D. wrote: "Re-enforcement" would be something like two cops giving you tickets for the same incident instead of one.
I have one that the bracket broke off. I recently replaced one on a customers E24 and have his old one. $50 plus shippinglocusteater wrote:Any more bulletproof, and some folks' E28's will come under federal scrutiny.(Now to find a spare subframe to minimize downtime . . . . . .)
Apparently, the guy was a bit of a car enthusiast with several other old rides in addition to the E28. According to his college age son who showed me car, he was out driving around D.C. in his RX-7 one day when he got t-boned by a kid in a WRX. Sure enough, some time after I purchased his E28 I found his registration papers buried in the glove box, Google News'd him, and found a small article in the Washington Post about the accident. Apparently he was on some surface street in the D.C. area that I can't recall and trying to make a left turn onto a side street when this asshole kid in a WRX coming the other way and estimated by police to be going over 100 mph, t-boned him and made him into an instant DOA. IIRC the article said the RX-7 went up in flames and the WRX kid was life-flighted to a local hospital with "life threatening injuries". I never could find any follow up articles to find out if the boy racer dickwad survived or not. Call me a big jerk if you like, but I honestly hope he survived with severe debilitating injuries for what he did to that kid and his mother. The college kid showed me the car but the title was in his mother's name. You should have seen the look on that poor woman's face when she signed the title over to me at my kitchen table. I wanted to give her and her son a big hug but that would have been too weird for all of us. I told the kid that I planned to fix the car up and probably even repaint it and he said his dad would have like that. How's that for pressurePhilo wrote:Lee.., what happened to the PO ??
Also, I posted this as a separate thread but feel it's relative to the steering bracket conversation...
http://www.mye28.com/viewtopic.php?p=681612#681612
You won't if you drive it like a girlie girl.........turbodan wrote:Never had a problem with my steering box mount.
M30 cars FTL
Find 20 minutes and install the "mwrench" fix-it dowel and bolt.....it's that easy.ASLAN wrote:so i know my bracket is toast but i wont have time to fix it for awhile. is it dangerous to continue driving the car without fixing it?
No need. Use the bolt, sleeve and big washer method temporarily. No subframe removal necessary unless you like extra work for either repair.ASLAN wrote:reading this write up made me feel that i should pull out the sub frame. i guess ill use bolt/dowel method until i have the time to do it right.
YES!ASLAN wrote:so i know my bracket is toast but i wont have time to fix it for awhile. is it dangerous to continue driving the car without fixing it?
C.R. Krieger wrote:Bump for inclusion in the Tech FAQ.
I can't seem to find the al spacer you refer to when I look at E32 and E34 info on realoem.com - could you help with a link maybe?euro635gas wrote:You can also just break the bracket off. Grind the old welds away. Weld a beefy washer over the hole and use the aluminum spacer that is stock on any E32 or E34. Fixed for good. Did this to my 533i over 5 years ago and has never had a problem since.
Nice write up.
The nice thing about BMW is that they fix problems. They fixed it on the E32 and E34s.