In my experience some cars are much more sensitive to rear alignment than others. But even the most sensitive ones still drove fine and tracked straight in nromal conditions, the issues appeared in limit handling situations.
In my experience some cars are much more sensitive to rear alignment than others. But even the most sensitive ones still drove fine and tracked straight in nromal conditions, the issues appeared in limit handling situations.
Hey guys, it looks like the memory steer issue is exactly as you described. I pulled the camber plates and the pillow balls definitely have a slight amount of play. New ones are 60 bucks for both so I'll just replace those. In the meantime I threw the old strut mounts together and no issue. I mushroomed the outer ball joint studs taking it apart and had to get new ones pressed in which was a pain but success.
I think a secondary factor is the rack not being perfectly centered when I installed. I thought it was and with the effort from the manual rack I didn't ever get to full lock so I didn't notice but it has less travel on the left than the right (I can turn more degrees when turning all the way right to lock than left to lock). It's a difference of about 15 degrees. I'm not sure if this would contribute but I think the solution is to take the wheel off, center it, and then get it aligned while informing them of the issue? They can adjust the tie rods to straight? I really don't want to have to remove the steering coupler - I could barely get it back on when I did the swap.
I also fixed the power steering finally. It's leaking slightly from some crush washers (fresh ones on order) and most importantly from the rack boots ever so slightly - I should've known better than to trust a cheap eBay used one, but I can always rebuild it when it gets worse. I semi flushed the system - did three fills, bleeds, and drains and the fluid drained clean. It doesn't really seem to want to fully bleed right now but I think more driving should help that. I did definitely feel some loss of feedback with the power steering but it's so worth it, though it does feel pretty light (I suppose coming from lack of power steering + fighting the piston changes my perspective lol)
In summary, I will rebuild and reinstall the camber plates, center the steering wheel and get it aligned and see if that fixes it fully.
In the meantime, I hit a bump and blew fuse #12 which is the radio, speedometer, and odometer. Replaced it and it just blew again after 4 or 5 days. This is a brand new issue that I haven't had for the past year of ownership and 3500 miles and I can't for the life of me think of why unless the bump jolted a connection loose that's now shorting. I'm really dreading having to deal with electrical gremlins.
In reply to Evanuel9 :
Older BMWs are often subject to electrical gremlins, but that's a new one on me. Do you have an aftermarket radio? I'm thinking they're more likely to have some sketchy wiring inside the dash that could contribute to a short.
In reply to Evanuel9 :
Are you sure you didn't nick something coming out of the fuse box when replacing the upper mounts? IIRC, the fuse box is right up against the strut tower on the driver side? All ground connections nice and tight with no corrosion? Start with the easy stuff first.
Loose connections don't short, bare wires do.
For now try and get a "circuit breaker fuse" (it's a fuse-shaped circuit breaker with a reset button on top) so at least you can get it going again quickly when it blows.
At least you know what circuit it is. You may have to get to really inconvenient spots at some point, but you can start by looking for damaged insulation or other out of whack stuff near the identified items (fuse box, radio, speedo, odo). It gets more "fun" if it turns out to be a random bit of damage somewhere between those items, but it's more likely that something was damaged or otherwise run amok close to the bits where work happens.
Unlikely to be related to the suspension, like others have said more likely to be questionable wiring repair or modifications. I would pull the radio first & take a look at the wiring.
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