Project E36 323is: Building the Poor Man’s M3, Part 2 – Suspension Overhaul Completion

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H&R TRAK+ 20mm spacer
Before we could bolt the front wheels back on and take it for an alignment, we had to install our H&R TRAK+ 20mm spacers.

 

The adjustment collar (ring nut) on the KWs was close enough to the tire that it wasn't worth the risk of making contact.  Plus, there's the added benefit of having a wider track up front which helps to balance out the E36's nature even more (we'll talk about our tire and wheel setup later). 
 
 
H&R TRAK+ wheel spacer installed
The TRAK+ spacers are extremely lightweight aluminum/magnesium while being stronger than typical billet aluminum.  Of course, for safety's sake they're hubcentric, so they not only sit on the hub perfectly, but they also have a full contact hub to allow your hubcentric wheels to bolt up securely.  Yes, longer bolts are definitely required.
 
 
Once we got the wheels bolted up and went through to double check everything, we were off to see Darin and Chris at West End Alignment to get our initial alignment settings squared away.
 
 
Adjusting GC camber/caster plates
We already have our caster maxed out with the GC camber plate adjustments as well as our Whiteline offset front control arm bushings, so it was just a matter of adjusting the camber and toe settings.
 
 
We ended up going with a track-oriented set up for now.  Caster is maxed out at 5.5° and we have -3° of camber with 1/8″ of toe out.  Those camber and toe settings are right in the sweet spot for a good track and street setup if you don't want to have various settings for each. The negative camber sounds like a tire killer, but with zero to 1/8″ toe out the tire wear isn't bad, and a few laps on track can always help to even things out.  On track it's a wonderful thing, as it helps us to maximize our front contact patch and reduce understeer.

 

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