Project E39 M5, Fixing Broken Sway Bar Brackets For Good!

For the E39 model, BMW made the mistake of making the antisway bar to frame brackets out of thin gauge aluminum to save a few grams per car.  These break from anywhere from nearly immediately to sometime in the cars life.  Almost all E39’s will suffer from this issue sometime in their life and our Project E39 M5 was no exception. In the past E39 owners had little choice than to buy new parts from BMW that would simply break again and again.  At $65 bucks for a set this starts to get old really quickly.

Our swaybar bracket broke with a bang.  On one side of the car, this is all of what was left.

We removed what was left of our swaybar brakets. This just takes a just few minutes. Jacking up and securing the car is much harder than removing the old parts and installing the new brackets,

Fortunately for E39 owners, a BMW owner decided to produce a heavy duty much improved steel replacement part for the flimsy stock bracket for his own car and is now selling them on Ebay for a fraction of the cost of the new OEM weak BMW part.  It is stamped out of heavy gauge steel and chome plated for rust resistance.  This sucker is never going to break!  At $24 it is one heck of a bargain!

Here you can look at the difference between the flimsy soft aluminum and real steel.  The bracket bolt digs into the soft aluminum and creates a stress riser, the aluminum quickly work hardens and bam cracks just north of the bolt! Look how much the bolt washer has dug into the stock bracket.  In contrast the new steel part is quite beefy and will last forever, even under hard use!