There are a couple potential issues with them from what I can tell:
1) The shim kit at the hub if needed for more positive camber range if you are lowered can be a difficult/confusing install as you mess with your speed sensor and it can be a pain to get it re-aligned so your ABS light doesn't go on/ABS works (I started reading it but saw "if needed" and stopped at "remove brake caliper" so I'm not even sure how it would go but it looked complicated).

2) The adjustment bolt on the top of the arms makes it just a little taller than stock arms, so if you are really low/squishy on the shocks you can bottom out the arm into the top of the wheel well without hitting the bumpstop on your shocks. They include rubber washer/shims to correct this that you would have to install on your front shocks before the existing bump stop if it happens (again a pain to DIY I'm sure).

I haven't had any issues so far with mine, although it's only been a couple weeks for the fronts and I'm at about max height on my BC COs for the winter. I still have a pretty good amount of positive camber range as well without the shim kit (again at the max height on the COs).

Not sure if there are other issues. I consider these more issues as a consequence of lowering in general though, not really the SPC arms themselves. SPC arms actually have these optional modifications for better/easier adjust-ability so they will work with both lowered cars and cars more at stock height. It depends on what you want. For example, would you rather be able to adjust camber in 5 min with the wheel still on/maybe have to add shims to bumpstop of shocks or would you rather have to drop/remove the arms (remove wheel, ball joint, etc.) to adjust them?

 

[QUOTE=68_GT;6210151]so zero camber is best for tires wear ? that's all I care about I don't carve corners I just want the car to look good lowered and not wear out the tires.


if all you care about is best for tire wear then your looking at the wrong number. TOE is the where you want to have dial in at 0. 0 toe means your tires are pointed directly forward.

Camber will only cause tire to wear on the inner or outer edges. As stated, natural camber is about 1-1.5 degrees. Many BMW are running like 2-3 degrees from the factory if not more. So camber you can live with, TOE you can not.

I say 0 or VERY close to zero is golden. But Toe will kill the fastest. Everything else falls under " the best i can do " in my book. My current alignment has F/R toe at .01-.02, i have front right camber a little and both front caster is borderline in spec.

No issues what so ever, i gotta go back to firestone now that my wheels and coils are off again as winter is coming.

 

this is my current alignment specs with revised Z springs. Mainly right now I'm wearing out the insides of my rear tires but this was after the alignment but I'm about to put on H&R RWD Sedan springs too and I want it all to be right. Hopefully my rear end will be a tad higher and front a tad lower than it is now.

LF camber -.089 caster 7.38 Toe .02
RF camber -1.45 caster 6.46 Toe .01
Cross Camber .56
Cross caster .92
Total Toe .02

LR camber -1.63 toe .14
RR camber -1.85 toe .13
Total Rear toe .26
thrust angle .01

this is how my silver X is sitting now I think I got screwed on the used Z springs I have in the front sits high ????

 

All your cambers are pretty negative which would wear the insides of the tires more (not sure to the extent but basing that on my car's specs rec. around -1 as limit all around). Your toe looks fine, although it could be lower in the rear.

 

the rear camber arms come with toe bolts right ? does that give enough toe adjustment ?

 

Yep, they come with one set of the bolts for additional toe range (they can also be used as camber bolts for added camber range), but you may not even need to do the toe bolts as your toe is fine right now-unless you want it even closer to 0 and it's already maxed out in terms of adjustment. You could probably consider the toe bolt optional (it is a little bit of a pain to dremel out the 4 holes larger), depending if you just want to do it all at once or not. My car's specs said max total toe in the rears is .46 (again not sure if all models/years have same specs). The kit says it has +/-4 degrees to camber and +/-3 degrees for toe in terms of adjustment.

 

I just ordered SPC rear camber arms and SPC front adjustible arms from THMotorspoprts. Adam was great help. With H&R Sedan springs since I wont be slammed will I need the ABS / brake shims ?

planning to use this instal video for the front arms and buy two new ball joint seats so I don't have to worry about removing them.
look lilke now I'm also going to have to get 4 new tires now after this is all done.....damn it these Yokohamas only had 14k easy miles on them !! Hopefully this will fix my tire wear problems and get the car sitting right once and for all !!!!!!!!!

 

If someone else knows better, he can chime in but personally I wouldn't install the ABS shims unless I found out that I had to after an alignment (that I was maxed out of positive camber range in the front and still wasn't close to 0 camber).

I think the front a-arm install is a lot easier than the rear-mostly because you are not under the car and the old bolts/parts are much cleaner/easier to remove (I live in the Northeast with plenty of road salt in the winter). For me the hardest part was getting the rusted cotter pins out of the ball joint (I had to drill one out after it snapped off). Also, be careful when tightening the bolts back on that hold the arms to the body if you don't load the suspension beforehand like I did-they thread into square nuts in the engine compartment that have a lot of play in them where they sit so it seems like its not very tight even when it is-I ended up snapping one of them and it was a bit of a pain to un-thread the remainder of the bolt with a vise-grips.

You can buy the ball joint cones if you want (not sure what they cost) but this ball joint tool from Harbor Freight got the job done easily for me (http://www.harborfreight.com/3-4-qua...tor-99849.html). When I attached my impact gun to it the cones popped right off.

The rears are no problem really if you've got a strong impact gun (+ Kroil, again if rust is an issue). Dremeling out the holes for the toe bolts is a bit of a pain because there are 4 of them and the exhaust side is pretty tight.

SPC's website (and YouTube) has install videos for both the fronts and rears.

 

I think the ball seats cost $9 each about what that tool costs.

My rear tires have good tread left but are worn badly on the inside shoulders one has some belt showing but just barely in one spot. My front tires wore nice and even all the way across but have significantly less tread depth than the rears since the rears have been riding so much more on the inside. A local Discount Tire shop tells me the two rears are trashed and need to be replaced because of the inner wear and I have to replace the fronts while I'm at it becasue the difference in tread depth from the good worn tires to two new tires is out of range for a AWD car. I have heard of this he said one tire is .4 less than a new tire would be and the other is .7 less than a new tire would be. Apparently one would be OK but who would replace three tires and not do the fourth after all this. Since I only had 14k miles on these tires he says he will give partial credit for the Yokohama warranty on them whcih was surprisingly 65k miles which was why I bought them. Looks like 4 new Yokohama 580's will cost me another $500 installed. Wish I had bought the road hazzard warranty he would have replaced two for free he said.

opnions ??

also my X had 80K miles on it shold I just replace the shocks and struts while I'm at it ? KYB's up front (forget the stock KYB replacement) and what for rears to go with H&R springs ? This is just a daily driver car I don't need anything for aggressive driving.

 

Not sure about the tires it looks like replacement of all 4 is best way to go-could try to sell the ones that are still okay as used.

As for the shocks, I did it (BC COs) because both mileage (70k) and was noticing lots of body roll that I wanted to get rid of at least somewhat. The KYB are supposed to be stiffer than original OEM because they compensate for old springs but on aftermarket springs they may give some improvement over OEM as far as handling. I don't know if it would be worth getting something other than KYB/OEM on the rear if you are putting those in front (and KYB GR2 are the only shock-only option for the front of AWD).

 

probably a really dumb question but does adding wheel spacers change anything with the alignment ? wanting to get in my new springs, SPC front and rear arms, new compression rod bushings and get the car aligned. I want to have the ride height all settled then see how much spacer I can run afterward but got worried adding spacers might change the alignment again ?

 

I can't see how a wheel spacer could affect alignment-it would just push the wheels straight out so camber/caster/toe shouldn't be affected at all. As long as you are putting it straight on the hub it would be similar to changing wheels like from summer to winter set which are different offsets which doesn't affect alignment (at least not in any meaningful way). Now if you got really big spacers you could start seeing changes in alignment readings more than the size of random, built-in variance (i.e. alignment readings will change after driving once around the block) because leverage may start to have an efffect on suspension components/rubber bushings-but I think you'd be talking about some pretty big spacers.

 

yes!!!!!!!!!!!

 

nice I want sway bars next !!! any word on how they feel on the car ??? How much are front a rear sway bars ?
cool just feeling paranoid I may need 1/2 in spacers or so. Any idea what is the largest that can be run on the stock wheel studs ?

 

Not sure, but you definitely want to be sure you have enough thread to hold those lug nuts . . . the stock lugs can't be much more than 1" of thread judging by the locknut and they don't bottom out so with stock wheels you don't have a whole lot to play with. To be sure you would have to determine how far into the lugnut it is threaded when tight (that would be your total clearance) and what is the safe amount of thread needed to hold them on (I don't know what it would be but I think it would be at least 1/4" probably more). Subtract that and you would have the max amount of spacer you could use.