Biatch is back on the streets

[kowalski]

so i got my car back from the mechanics.
dude fitted my new koni shox and vogtland springs.
also fitted all lemförder suspension bushings and arms on rear axle.
car now have a more gocart feel when driving it, drive is not harsh, i like it a lot with more stability.

i have #1 pads upfront and #4 pads rear without rubbing, speedbumps and full lock steering wheel without rub issues
wheelgap is now 1 finger space, looks great

he also did my monowiper, stop position is 90 degrees

futuremod will be resonator delete, we didn't want to cut the exhaust to remove 2ndary cats and resonator, i will have to buy a ready made kit for deleting only resonator

she looks hot with the new stance!

[kowalski]

next batch

[John Jones Jr.]

Nice stance there Kowalski. Sorry, to say I wouldn't thank you for the wiper mod. What shocks did you get in the end, Twin or Mono?

[kowalski]

shox are twins

wiper mod looks better live, pics are kinda bad quality it was way too sunny yesterday to get good pictures

[Vetruck]

The ride hieght looks flawless- very well done.

Im still trying to work out a few bugs on mine- just have not had time to mess with the car lately but mine still needs attention.
I could not find the rear spring pads I need to raise mine a little- looking for the early type 13mm pads. My front sits identical to yours, but my rear is a little lower by about 3/4".

Did you end up fitting new camber links in the rear? or are you using eccentrical bolts? I notice the rear camber is corrected nicely.

[kowalski]

The ride hieght looks flawless- very well done.

Im still trying to work out a few bugs on mine- just have not had time to mess with the car lately but mine still needs attention.
I could not find the rear spring pads I need to raise mine a little- looking for the early type 13mm pads. My front sits identical to yours, but my rear is a little lower by about 3/4".

Did you end up fitting new camber links in the rear? or are you using eccentrical bolts? I notice the rear camber is corrected nicely.


Hey Mr.
thanks for the compliments.

as i already had bought all replacement parts before we began chatting about adjustable toe links, my mechanic had all these parts installed to my car.
my MB-tech güru said factory Lemfoerder toe links are good enuff for adjustability when lowering the car.
that's what i have on my car, full lemfoerder suspension parts, everything works great, car is a joy to drive feels solid as an iron on the road, waaaaaaaaaaay more fun to drive her now!!
it's a complete new car feeling.
the good stuff, there's no rattle inside cabin.

maybe i should have got the monotubes if they last longer than twin tubes?
my mechanic did the full firm set-up and this is how I will be driving her for the rest of my car's life on full firm set-up.
if i had known the full firm set-up on monotubes would have given a great joyride i would have bought them instead of the twin version shox.
you only adjust them once and then you're happy with them.

don't get me wrong, i like the ride with twin tubes, they are more comfortable for adjustment than mono's, this is the only advantage vs mono's adjustability
however there's one problem with twintubes, the adjusting knob will not fit where the accelerator-throttle is fitted on drivers side engine bay, it's way to tight, instead of using the knob for shox adjustability you need to use pliers and do full turns.

car is a dream to drive
ride height is 1 finger gape = PERFECT!!

My personal mechanic is the best, he's the only one who touches my car!

[Vetruck]

I was asking about camber adjustment, not toe adjustment.

The twintubes are just as good as the monotubes 9we are only talking about koni's twin tube design- other type of twintube shocks are inferiro because Koni uses dual valve dicks intheir design unlike anoyone else. the twintubes are only a little bit heavier in unsprung weight than the monotubes, that is the only thing that make monotubes slightly better.

So what did you do for rear camber correction?

[Vetruck]

I have a strong intuition that when I install my camber links I just made that I will loose toe adjustment. I barely have anymore room to keep the front of the rear tires toeing in too much. I am at 3/32 toe in right now and the car improved greatly from the 3/8" toe in it suffered from when I lowered it. However, once I put my new camber links on and extend them to get rid of the -2.4* rear camber I will probably go back to about 5/16"-3/8" toe in AGAIN without touching the toe arm. I will not have any more room to adust them back out for the added track width of the upper camber arms. What I will probably need to do is put some Kmac eccentric lower rear control arm bushings into it to get the rear wheel track width back inward to match the OEM toe link range. My car is very darty right now on road grooves with the fat rear tires (IThe BFG's have extremely hard sidewall deflection- makes for a squirrely ride when you have alot of stright line camber. The wheel that gets the most footprint will force the car into the opposite direction. Smooth rad is fine, but on grooved roads or on steering imputs I am getting a considerable amount of rear wheel steer I need to engineer out of the car.

A side note for alot of you to learn from here- Just by putting back on my OEM wheels and tires (which are half the width) all of this goes away and the car drives beatifully. Wider tires require alot more percise alignment. We do not have the provisions for this in OEM specs.

Alos, the more grip a tire has (meaning quality of the wider tire) will make a defference also. More grip equals more problems bcause the tire contact patch is more unforgiving. Don't get me wrong, the car is much more aggressive in handling that stock, but the feel of the contriols is a bit darty so you have to stay aware and do a few corrections here and there which is not comfortable at great speed. Anything under 60 is fine, but enter a high speed corner aproaching 1g and the car is lifting and highsiding because of the rear steer and bushing colapsing. I get alot of movement int he steering wheel fighting the chassis which makes for a handful. I think I am going to need ALOT more work on this car that I assumed. I am not happy with it at all. The wifey loves it and says its fine, but she just basically commutes to work and stroll around town like a normal human being- she never presses on a car agressively.

[kowalski]

I was asking about camber adjustment, not toe adjustment.

The twintubes are just as good as the monotubes 9we are only talking about koni's twin tube design- other type of twintube shocks are inferiro because Koni uses dual valve dicks intheir design unlike anoyone else. the twintubes are only a little bit heavier in unsprung weight than the monotubes, that is the only thing that make monotubes slightly better.

So what did you do for rear camber correction?

ok, good to know about koni's, thanx

you can invest a lot of bread in your w202, however i don't think you will ever be satisfied with it?
a w202 is not a sporty car, it's a mid sized luxury sedan.
you can tweak it here n there but it will never be perfect.

camber correction = guru set camber correction close to 0 near factory settings.
tirewear is set to go across the tread compared to factory settings where the tread is set to only wear on inside tirewall
sorry, i don't have the exact numbers for my camber/toe set-up

factory eccentric bolts are used up front

[Vetruck]

I didn't ask about alignment specs, I asked you what your mechanic added to correct your rear camber? Ill assume he simply added the eccentric bolt kit.

[kowalski]

I didn't ask about alignment specs, I asked you what your mechanic added to correct your rear camber? Ill assume he simply added the eccentric bolt kit.

he used standard bolts nothing special

[Vetruck]

There is no way that car was lowered to aprox 25.5" fender height in the rear with 18's and the camber not have some kind of provisions put into it to correct it to near zero as you say. Impossible

The standard rear control arm bolts are not adjustable which means you have very minimal top adjustent to take out almost 2* negative camber. He had to add something you are unaware off or he slotted your rear mount holes and you did not know.

[kowalski]

i bought standard lemförder bolt kit
only non OEM modification done to my car is koni - vogtland springs and mb-arts camber arms, the rest is standard

he said camber is set close to 0 factory specs, until today my rear tires wore across tread pattern which is good thanks to my camber arms

i'm not sure if stealership sells eccentric bolts for rear axle?

[Vetruck]

Now what you post makes sense. You did not mention in your first post that you installed aftermarket camber arms- you only stated you had OEM replacement parts from lemförder. There would be no way to correct the camber with lemforder OEM arms, that's why I said "impossible".

We now have better info and understanding. :)

[Vetruck]

Do you know what he sat your rear toe at? Actually if you hhave data on what the factory spec for alignment on these cars are then could you post any info you have- I have not been able to come up with any solid data from searching the internet. I have mine at 3/32" in on both front and rear.