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      02-19-2019, 12:38 AM   #112
warrenw
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Drives: 19 AW M2C, 21 M340i
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Ohlins Install + Painting the Muffler

Ohlins Install + Painting the Muffler

Yesterday I had President's Day off from work so some M2 friends and I headed over to our local BMW performance shop so we could do some work.

For me, I wanted to paint my muffler black and install my Ohlins. Another friend, who just received his M2C, wanted to paint his muffler, install front/rear reflector deletes, and install the oil cooler guard.

I showed up a little late since traffic in Seoul sucks, and immediately got to work once I got there.



All lined up, pretty and all.







Now time to get the old stuff outta there! 5,180 miles on these.











Now it was time to start putting the Ohlins together and installing them.

So.... Issue number 1 was that I just went with what Ohlins sends in the box which is 9k/18k or something extreme like that, I've ridden in that before and it's teeth shattering, at least on roads here in Korea. So we sent off for some 12k springs for the rear, much more manageable.

....Then issue number 2. One of the rear dampers' adjustment knob was freely spinning and apparently disconnected. As a result not only could you not adjust the firmness, but if you put weight on the damper to compress it, it wouldn't rebound after. Obviously some issues there.

So as my car was already fairly well taken apart at this point, so do I reinstall everything stock and ship the entire giant package back to the US for warranty repair? Korea has an Ohlins branch so I can just send it there, but does my US warranty cover it? Thankfully the shop owner had a lightly used set of Ohlins which he grabbed two rear dampers from and loaned them to me while I send my pair to Ohlins Korea for repair. I'm going to see if Ohlins USA will reimburse the cost to fix it, but we'll see!









Next on the list was that ugly fugly muffler!

The way we did it was we took (and by we I mean the shop owner and his employee, I just watched) the exhaust off, prepped it by taping off the tailpipes and spraying some sort of cleaner on it to prep the surface. We could have used steel wool to prep it, but we didn't because it seemed like it was "good enough" and if some paint comes off later I'll just reapply. Or, buy a new exhaust.

Anywho, once that was done it was painted twice then reinstalled. Yeah I guess we could have done the heat cycles but as in the above paragraph, if there's issues with the paint I'll just buy a new exhaust. The paint we used was Rustoleum flat black rated to 2000F.

















The muffler pretty much disappears now. Happy with the results!



Meanwhile I was jealously looking at my friend's new M Performance shifter... Might be ordering this soon along with some other alcantara stuff Another friend has a M Performance steering wheel and I really like the feel of alcantara on the steering wheel so I might do that too.



I also took a minute to do a mini-photoshoot of another buddy's car, timing was perfect with the snow.










We also did a mini photoshoot with everyone but I'll post about that in a subsequent post, I'm still going through my photos.



OKAY. SO THE OHLINS. WHAT DO I THINK ABOUT THE OHLINS.

So for starters, I have a s2000 in the states that is on Ohlins. Love them on there, knew I'd love them no matter the application so I didn't even cross shop I just went for it. If I wanted to directly compare the stock M2 suspension and Ohlins I would break it into two categories:

For every day driving, Ohlins don't "crash" over bumps and dips in the road like the M2's stock suspension does. For whatever reason my apartment complex thought it would be a great idea to install those stone pavers (they're pretty gnarly) so on my stock suspension it would be pretty jarring and it would seem to "crash" over them, whereas the Ohlins float over them for lack of a better term. I won't say that you don't feel any vibration or that it's literally like an air ride suspension or something like that, but it definitely stays much more composed. As far as stiffness, they're definitely more stiff! But it's not the "so stiff I'm bouncing around everywhere with my teeth falling out" but you can definitely feel that it is stiffer.

For spirited driving, the steering feels more direct and the car definitely is more "planted" and I have a lot more confidence taking a corner. Body roll is diminished significantly. I'll know more once I push the car a bit but yesterday it was pretty cold so I took it easy. I can't underestimate the "direct" feeling of the steering now... Huge difference.

I am going to wait to fully open it up because I still need to get an alignment. I can tell that switching out the suspension has tweaked it a bit (which is understandable) and I went to do it yesterday but the place was so booked up and it was threatening snow so I didn't get it done. I'm hoping for this weekend, it's not a big deal since I took the train to work today anyway lol.
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