R56 Rear Arms

Picked These Up Locally

Before

After

Powerflex Uppers

Cleaned and Painted. I plan on starting the rear soon. This was all supposed to be a winter project but we ended up moving and I needed the car to remain mobile.

 

Wow I love what you have done with your car. Nice work trouble shooting the root cause of the engine issues as well. How easy was it to get the R56 seats in? I wasn't even aware they could be made compatible with an R53.

 

Thanks! After doing this, I cannot see why anyone would want to change these bushings with the subframe in the car. The seats were not hard to install and it is a pretty common mod. There are several threads on that in here. Hardest part was the wiring, specifically the airbag, and enlarging the pivot holes in the rear.

 

 

Not 100% sure, but these may be original. BMW is showing on there. If they are, not bad for 1/4 of a million miles.

 

I also wanted to point out the towers as it relates to mushrooming. I read several posts on this subject and there seem to be varying levels of severity with this issue. The images above are from before and in my case, there was a slight deformation of stud closest to the engine on both sides. Very hard to see but of you look at the tops of each stud, you can see the inward tilt.

I found out as I was installing the one on the passenger side. as I was tightening that nut. Keep in mind that if you intend to use the Indurators, you lose quite a bit of stud length and it is very easy to overtighten/strip the nut. Especially when it is trying to reform the tower on the way down. For the other side, I used a small block of wood and gave it a few taps first.

 

Got a sunroof delete panel from LRB Speed to delete the inoperative Webasto unit. These were essentially installed by the dealer as an option. It would even be shown on the window sticker. However, since these were available with sunroofs anyways, I am not sure why they would decide to do that.

Delete panel was relatively straight forward to install. Most of the time was spent to paint and mock. Luckily, I was able to source a new roof bow from Mini for about $35

Webasto unit

Missing roof bow

Delete panel and new bow

 

Added some sound deadening. Notice the difference right away, just by closing the door. Sounded much more solid than before.

 

Car is very dirty in this image due to winter storage but I will try getting a better image after cleaning it up. The panel is the same color as the scoop. Clear is still not completely cured yet so too early to cut/sand.

 

Also obtained a new headliner and re-covered it. Raised graphics are from 1/4 inch foam and material is a gray/gunmetal microfiber, meant to somewhat match the exterior details. Cost $24 for all from Michaels. I will grab another image once I finish installing it.