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Old 09-30-2016, 08:52 PM
bmw540san bmw540san is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by oldskewel View Post
It sounds like the OP did not replace those. I did not see any mention of them anywhere here.

When I did suspension work on my '01, soon after getting it, prompted by excessive, uncorrectable rear camber and rear tire wear, I was pretty careful about not replacing things unnecessarily.

On my car, those carrier-arm ball joints (BTW, they're called ball joints, but there is no ball, they seem closer to what I would call bushings) were perhaps the only items that NEEDED to be replaced. I did replace many other things, "once I was in there" (integral links, since you R+R them to get to the ball joints; and then, hey, since you're paying for an alignment, may as well replace anything that seems less than perfect on the front - that's what I did).

I used Lemfoerder 33-32-6-767-748, "Rear Ball Joint", superseded from 33 32 1 095 631. Same both left and right.


I took a quick look at that video - looks good. He gets to the actual pressing out of the ball joints around 7 minutes in. Don't be fooled.

Doing that without the right tool can be somewhere between frustrating and impossible. I used local-rented general purpose tools, and it took a lot of work/experimentation/fabrication/swearing to get them to work. The BMW-specific tool for this job has (I think) a special cutout in one of the cylindrical pieces, allowing it to sit properly in place. This minor feature (as I've heard, and can fully believe) turns the almost-impossible into easy.

This particular job is very important on these cars, and you'll find a lot of references on this forum.
I did not replace them and possibly I made a mistake by not doing it. I'll take a second look at them and report back.
Part of my not paying to much attention to them comes from E39 where they're original on both E39's with no issues. It does seem due to X5 being heavier and with the monster tires, they go bad faster.
When I did alignment, the best the guy could do was -1.8 camber which is barely in the spec and it will wear out inner tire.
That should've been alarm enough but having 3 aging BMW's, my attention is constantly fluctuating between them.
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