just ordered mine from tire rack today. excited! hope the install goes as smoothly as I will be doing it myself.

I installed mine last Thursday and leveled the car out using the adjustable links from lowerinlinks.net; ultimately the drop all the way around was 1 1/2 ". Had I used the H&R links, the front would probably dropped 1 3/4" as discussed earlier in this peice. My alignment shop has the current State of the Art equipment and is certain that getting to the correct alignment specs will not be a problem.

I' have been very tempted in lowering the X5..but can't decide...

does any know why H&R offers 2 models (50435-3 and 50435-4). it says the rears are 0.2 lowered compared to the other model#.
1- Why will you lower the rear less or more compared to the front ?
2- Are the rear links adjustable in both model#s hence you can adjust the height ?

thanks guys

There are two model number as one is a supposedly 1.5" drop and one is a 2.0" drop. The links are slightly adjustable so you can pretty well match them up to the drop in the front or you can keep the ass end a bit lower. Not sure why it isn't an even drop all the way around but every car I have ever worked on in the past has this same set up, higher front than rear. Probably due to the weight of the motor?

maintain the rake angle???

H&R drop distances are based upon a 3.0 liter 6 rather than the heavier 4.8. In reading this chain and others you will find that the 1.2 kit actually lowers the front of a 4.8 car about 1.75" (the same results as I got). The H&R rear links only drop the rear 1"; I used Loweringlinks to drop the rear 1 1/2" so that the car sits totally level. The 1 1/2" rear drop is about as far as you can go without destroying the car's ride quality.

I'm going to skip lowering ... so if anyone wants my new 'still in the box" H&R kit PM me...

isn't the front higher than the rear stock ? 1.2 and 1.0 should make it even , don't it ?

If you read the 1st post in this chain, you'll find that (factory stock), the rear of the car is 1/4" lower than the front!

Sorry for the quality. Photographed with Blackberry 9900...

http://s018.radikal.ru/i512/1209/3e/3d67b3084733.jpg

http://i017.radikal.ru/1209/09/23e348676abf.jpg

http://s011.radikal.ru/i315/1209/0b/383b24756554.jpg

http://s017.radikal.ru/i442/1209/e2/2dae91ccecd8.jpg

I used Hamann lowering kit...