E46 Touring Front Suspension

[bmassey]

The initial message was deleted from this topic on 12 April 2012 at 17:21

[essayer]

When you say horizontal play, where do you mean? The wheel up and down relative to the suspension strut, or forward and back in the arch ?

The wishbone bushes wearing is common on E46s but usually manifests itself by a knocking under braking which you would notice under driving, and probably fail at MOT time.

[Mr-B]

I think the large chain type outfits such as Kwik Fit have "lower tolerance" levels to ensure more MOT fails and more quotes for work, well that's my conspiracy theory anyway. To back it up I took my car to I think Nationwide for an MOT and they failed it on the bushes, took it to an independent who also did MOT's and they passed it without any work doing on them. Took it to the same independent a year later and it still passed without any work but got an advisory on the bushes so they will need doing shortly.

Oh, and the quote I had from Nationwide ran to about £600 as they quoted for all the advisory stuff to be done as well, couple of tyres, wipers, etc, etc. Be careful out there!

[BJT]

Could very well be wishbone bushes. They went on my Z4 and think they are about done on my E46 now.
You will hear clonking when driving over bumps.

[bmassey]

Update: the anti roll bar link has been replaced on the offending corner, whether or not this had anything to do with the kwik fit problem I don't know...