Worried with those subframe stories

[mattCSLnut]

BMW are having a fookin laugh saying that this doesnt happen and denying it in Germany ..then coming up with Technical Bulletins and stupid crazy foam fixes ... I may write a letter to them and say Im going to drive around in it until the floor gives way and kills me !:hahaha: ... then I will sue them :thumbs:

That could work :thumbs: BTW good to see you back on here matey :beer:

[JBird]

I would be interested to hear if any forum members who had a proper floor replacement and foam fill early on have carried out a detailed inspection since. Any signs of cracks or corrosion? I remember some ppl geting it done back in 09 - cant find the post though...only about 200 subframe threads! General search of tinternet doesn't find anything either - good sign i guess.

we have seen 2 replacement boot floors fail again within a 3 year period of the repair.

Monkey, do you recall the root cause of the second time round failures you saw, corroded welds poping, or genuine cracks in foam filled floors?

I'm quite upset with BMW at the moment... On top of their recent ugly designs and turbo-engine philosopy, they handled this Problem quite badly

:hahaha::hahaha::hahaha: cheer up Alex, all the more reason to get the CSL sorted and hold onto it. Just incase you havn't seen it, clearly plenty of others who share your opinion mate....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtenM2hFTgE&feature=youtube_gdata_player

[Alx007]

Haha, this one is a classic JBird.

It makes me laugh every time - thank you.

Like you, I'm interested to know if any car has failed after having the foam injections.

Thank you again everyone!

[The Gorilla]

Hi,

MikeR- no, they replace with more or less the
same panel etc, nothing is done with regard
to addressing the main cause, as its
a design flaw.

Go to any Chassis engineer worth his salt
tell him you have a triple layer sheet floor
section with two vertical folds and that the
fixing point for the subframe bolts are
spot welded in with top and bottom
flanges.

Then tell him that the subframe mounts via
4 H/T bolts all in the same plane to a flat
'seat' section and there are no Chassis
dowels for bush location.

Mention that one Bush has an elongated hole
in the alloy insert for subframe fitting,
and that under ''clamp'' the bushes are
no more than 60nm.

Then tell him you going to inject foam
or whatever to stiffen the the 3 layer
honeycoombe sheet, as the torque loads
from the diff, which is mounted solely on
the subframe, and the lateral G loads
into the bushes via the rear wheels,
CSL on Type R can pull close to
1.2/1.5 lateral G in some corners, are
ripping the mounts and causing sheet metal
fatigue and cracks.

A good one would ask what medication your
on and a poor one would tell you that
''it'' migh work, not sure but he available
if your require his services.

As a tail note when BMW developed the
M3 GTR, one of my favorite Race cars
of all time, one of the first things to go
was the E46 rear subframe.


Regards,

The Gorilla.

[alexk]

Danny the solution is very simple in my opinion.
We need to get an E46 M3 GTR chassis. :notworthy:

[The Gorilla]

Hi Alex,

I agree with that for sure.

Regards,

The Gorilla.

[The Gorilla]

Hi,

Alex, no ''Bushes'' to worry about either !!!!

Regards,

The Gorilla

[Alx007]

I would say though, if yours has not cracked by now, there's a good chance it wont.

Thank you again James, that's good to read.

My car has currently 60'000 km, but with all those horror stories, I'm not sure it will not break one day.

@The Gorilla: That would be a nice solution!

I'm wondering if any car had cracks even after the foam injection.

I won't do anything before the spring anyway.

[MCSL]

Does anyone know how long warranty BMW give on the replacement floor?

[Steve B]

I had mine done at BMW Hitchin bodyshop and they had a guy from France bring his car over for a goodwill replacement....


Steve

[Monkey]

I would be interested to hear if any forum members who had a proper floor replacement and foam fill early on have carried out a detailed inspection since. Any signs of cracks or corrosion? I remember some ppl geting it done back in 09 - cant find the post though...only about 200 subframe threads! General search of tinternet doesn't find anything either - good sign i guess.


Monkey, do you recall the root cause of the second time round failures you saw, corroded welds poping, or genuine cracks in foam filled floors?



:hahaha::hahaha::hahaha: cheer up Alex, all the more reason to get the CSL sorted and hold onto it. Just incase you havn't seen it, clearly plenty of others who share your opinion mate....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtenM...e_gdata_player

Genuine cracks I think I'm right in saying one of them had the foam fill, not sure on the other one. It may just be isolated cases, potentially down to human error in the fitting process. Time will tell if this will happen more frequently.

[Monkey]

Does anyone know how long warranty BMW give on the replacement floor?

I would have to double check, but 99% certain its 3 years.

[JBird]

Does anyone know how long warranty BMW give on the replacement floor?

The warranty on the workmanship is lifetime, if you keep up annual inspections at the bodyshop that did the repair (insp should be free). If you don't manage the inspections it reduces to 5 years. This only applies to the owner of the car at the time of the repair. This is what I was told at the Woodstock bodyshop where i had mine done. I believe this is std for all UK BMW bodyshops. Exactly what "workmanship" entails i dont know. If the fucker starts corroding, i'd argue it wasn't done properly, but BMW always seem to have a get out clause with corrosion. Certificate looks like this. On the reverse side is where you log the inspections.

[JBird]

Take back what I said about the corrosion....turns out its 12 years.

...although, it sounds a bit grey, 12 yrs on the new floor, or 12 years since the car was first registered? Sounds more like the latter which doesn't help much. I guess it means 04 cars that have had new floors have their inherent cover till 2016, but 03 cars (which had just 6 years corrosion warranty originally) have no corrosion cover on the new floor. Gee, BMW thought that one thorough well. Hopefully common sense would prevail and we would still be looked after if they all start rusting.

[MCSL]

I would have to double check, but 99% certain its 3 years.

Cheers.