I had those installed on my old 318ti. Great bushings, no squeaks, and lots and lots of control without too much harshness.
While visiting BimmerWorld we picked up some Powerflex bushings for our M3.
Powerflex offers bushing inserts for the stock rear subframe bushings. These inserts reinforce the rear mounts.
While these reinforce the front mounts.
BimmerWorld serves as the U.S. distributor for Powerflex bushings. Know what that means? Before leaving their shop we were able to stock up on the parts needed to right our M3’s suspension.
Our suspension wasn’t horrible, but after 138,000 miles a few bushings showed some hairline cracks. Specifically, the front control arm bushings and rear trailing arm bushings looked a little tired.
E46 rear subframes have a bad rap. Just look at them funny, the internet pundits say, and they’ll rip the mounts right out of the unibody. Yikes!
BimmerWorld’s James Clay soothed our fears, though, explaining that this issue is much more common on abused cars—and especially abused cars sporting worn-out bushings. Based on what he could see, he felt that our car was in good shape. Yes, some of our bushings needed to be replaced, but by and large the car was solid.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, so he did recommend some work back there: Powerflex’s subframe bushing inserts. Replacing the entire rear subframe bushings requires dropping the entire subframe. These inserts install without as much work. James said to budget about an hour for the entire job.
Figure a bit more than $200 for all of these Powerflex subframe inserts. We’ll be installing these shortly and will definitely report back.
Watch the pages of Grassroots Motorsports for the full project car series. Subscriptions start at just $10.
I had those installed on my old 318ti. Great bushings, no squeaks, and lots and lots of control without too much harshness.
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