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If you don’t know about SPL Parts suspension links you certainly should look them up. If they make parts for your particular project then they are a must for your build. Nothing gets overlooked with their products, including those awesome blue titanium collar bolts so these things only weigh what they need to in order to retain strength and not an ounce more.Many of our other suspension components, like the sway bars, are stock but we also needed to make sure that we were able to fully adjust all aspects of alignment and controlling how the alignment changes through the range of travel. To do that we once again looked to SPL Parts who in our opinion make the best suspension links on the market. We brought them into the BMW world on our last E92 M3 race car and we are very happy to have them back on board with us on this new M4. Once again they have delivered by creating high quality adjustable direct replacement suspension links for virtually every suspension arm on the car. SPL Parts suspension links to two main things; they replace all of the factory rubber suspension bushings with spherical ends which eliminate slop and un-wanted articulation and they allow for a huge range of adjustability with their threaded bodies used to extend or contract the length of the arms to adjust everything you could want.
Our SPL Parts front lower control arm is a work of art. It’s adjustable length of course but it also allows for roll center correction via use of spacers.On the front end of the car, caster, camber, and roll center are all adjustable thanks to SPL Parts front lower control arms and caster arm bushings. For now we will retain the factory tie rod ends to adjust toe. The top mounts on our BC Racing coilovers are also slotted for camber adjustment.
SPL Parts now makes all replacement adjustable arms for the rear of the M4 with the exception of the spring perch.On the rear of the car everything but the rear spring perches have been replaced with SPL Parts arms to allow for camber, toe, and bump steer adjustments. They even offer eccentric lock-out washers to put in place of no longer needed cam lobe bolts used for adjustment from the factory. The lock-out washers eliminate the possibility of changing alignment settings due to cam bolts slipping.
The guys at Essex Parts Services and AP Racing made us some caliper mounting brackets to allow us to re-use our amazing Radi-Cal Pro5000R endurance front brake kit from our previous E92 M3 endurance race car build. These calipers are unbelievable works of art and fit up to a 1” thick Hawk Performance brake pad.Of course, none of this would mean anything if we couldn’t slow the car down for the first corner so once again we turned to Essex Parts Services to get us a real-deal endurance competition brake kit for the front of our M4. The new kit is identical to the set we ran on our E92 M3 race car just made to fit the M4. It uses the unbelievably lightweight AP Racing Radi-Cal Pro5000 endurance caliper and 2-piece j-hook floating rotors. The endurance caliper allows us to run up to 1” thick Hawk Performance DTC compound brake pads that hopefully wont have to be changed during the course of our 25 hour long race.
Outside of some AP Racing steel braided brake lines and Hawk Performance pads our rear brakes for now will remain stock but the guys at AP Racing are working hard to make a matching kit for the rear that, fingers crossed, will make it to us in time for the 25 Hour.
