New Tie Rods Made My 287,000-Mile BMW M3 Way Better to Drive

 

New Tie Rods Made My 287,000-Mile BMW M3 Way Better to Drive

This past summer, after getting rid of my M5, I picked up a 2002 BMW M3 with an incredible 284,000 miles on the odometer to use as my daily driver. While it’s great cosmetically and still makes good power, a lot of the suspension is original and in need of serious attention. When I first acquired the car, the worst part was the steering; I’d never in my life owned a car with this much play, and before long it began to drive me crazy. Thankfully, the fix wasn’t as expensive or invasive as I feared. New Tie Rods Made My 287,000-Mile BMW M3 Way Better to Drive

The tie rods! Sloppy steering or play in the wheel can almost always be traced to tie rods that have gone bad. Due to the car’s mileage, I naturally suspected that either the steering rack itself or the rubber in the column might also need replacement; thankfully, that wasn’t the case. New Tie Rods Made My 287,000-Mile BMW M3 Way Better to Drive

Replacing inner and outer tie rods on an E46 is as easy as it is on any other BMW of that era. Detaching the inner rods from the steering rack takes nothing more than a wrench and a bit of muscle. The only tough part is popping the ball joints out of the front knuckles. The tie rods in the car were likely original, meaning they’d been sitting, pressed into the knuckle, for 20 years and nearly 300,000 miles. So I used a ball-joint popping tool, which is essentially just a big two-pronged metal fork, to get the job done. A few dozen whacks with a hammer later, the joints separated. New Tie Rods Made My 287,000-Mile BMW M3 Way Better to Drive

I don’t have easy access to an alignment machine, so I just eyeballed the tie rod lengths and installed the replacement units. The goal here is to get the alignment close enough that the car is basically drivable, but leaving it like this for more than a few hundred miles will eventually destroy the front tires. Don’t worry; I already have an appointment with an alignment shop. There’s no way I’d continue to drive with my steering wheel like this:

The bright side is, the steering now feels like an M3’s should. It’s direct with plenty of feel and no dead spot on-center.

Have you Done Anything Else to the Car?

When I first picked up this M3, the ABS system would sometimes pulsate the front left rotor out of nowhere, causing a scary jolt in the cabin. Sometimes this would happen at highway speeds; not under braking or anything, just while I was cruising along. 

Afterwards the DSC and brake lights on the dash would illuminate. Each time I power-cycled the car the lights would go away until it happened again. This cycle repeated itself a few times until the two lights began to stay illuminated even on startup. In an attempt to clear those lights on the dash for good, I replaced the speed sensor tucked in the front left wheel well, believing it was the source of the issue. 

Unfortunately nothing changed, so either the system needs to be reset by a BMW-specific diagnostic tool, or there’s another problem. Either way I’m not too happy. I hate dash lights and try to do everything in my power to get rid of them. Plus, neither my traction control nor my ABS are working right now. These are two things I’d like to have.

So New Tie Rods Made My 287,000-Mile BMW M3 Way Better to Drive

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