BMW E36 steering column lowering

[BANKAIm3]

Absolutely ... should be M8. We used some 1" (or so) aluminum pucks as spacers. Old head bolt washers work well also as they are nice and thick

Just wanted to make sure I don't need to pick up nuts for the M8 bolts. Might do this today. Wish me luck with my chisel my nizzle.

[turbosporttsi]

Thanks for all who contributed techniques to this thread. I have a tilt column, which makes it more difficult to get to those two bolts...what I wound up doing was to cut a slit in the heads with a dremel and cut off wheel, then break them loose with a chisel ON THE OD OF THE WASHER, for increased leverage. Once the washer simply spun on its own and the bolt wasn't turning, I then simply unscrewed them with a slotted screwdriver.

Not fun, but completely worth it. Thanks, bf.c!

[BANKAIm3]

)!#% shear bolts!!!!! I'm chiseling them off instead turning it

- - - Updated - - -

Took much longer than expected, but I finally got it done thanks to this thread. Thank you everyone! Now I can see the top of my dash over my steering wheel.

[MiniMike87]

Noticed in the pictures people have put up they have no dash.. Is this still easy to get to and hammer out with everything still there?

Also I have an e36 Compact I presume these will still work the same?

Thanks

[nickmerrone]

bringing this back from the dead..anyone have any pics of how much lower they can get it?

[nnamssorxela]

Another revival: I'm also wondering how low I can go, and what exactly the limiting factor is. I'm pretty short and I just put new seats in which make me even shorter. I've also installed an aftermarket steering wheel and quick release that bring the wheel much closer to me. The downside is that at the current angle, the wheel is way too high and I'd like to lower the entire column about 2". I plan on making a new bracket to bolt it up to, but I'm wondering if anything will bind up.

[nnamssorxela]

Ended up lowering it about 2 inches. No issues that I can tell.

[aeronaut]

Good to know. So not binding in the joints? I need to take a look on the other side of the firewall to see what happens to the other end when the wheel is lowered.
I just lowered mine 1" at the mounting points.

[nnamssorxela]

Seems smooth as butter. Had a hard day of rally-x and performed flawlessly.

[SpecialED]

Thanks to *everyone* who contributed to this thread over the years... nearly every post helped give me more info on this seemingly simple mod—I mean, it is really simple... just remove two bolts, add spacers, and then resecure with longer bolts—but the devil is in the details, right?

Since I bothered to take all the pictures (I need evidence to justify to the wife all the time I'm spending in the garage, seemingly doing nothing) here's a bunch of specific information on what I did and how I did it, just in case there's still one more E36 track or autox person out there who's like, "dude, this super-high fixed steering angle is ridiculous..."

I did this recently and it is fairly simple to drop the steering column a modest amount. I dropped mine about a quarter of an inch. I found the easiest way to remove the security bolts was by using a chisel and striking the bolt head at an angle. I tried a drill and tap, but had no luck with that. After you remove the security bolts replace with longer hex head bolts and spacers.

I'll start with the challenge of removing the two OEM M8 x 25mm "fracture bolts"... don't do what I did: waste your time trying to use a flathead screwdriver or a prybar as a "chisel"; the handle will serve to absorb the blows from your hammer. If you don't have a proper chisel, just go get some cheap ones somewhere. For me, the least expensive and most convenient source—meaning I didn't have to wait even a day or two for them to arrive via Amazon—were the "Surebilt cold punch and chisel set 8 piece" part #98078 available from Auto Zone, currently only $10.99 + tax:



Using just two of them in that kit—the narrower 1/2"-wide flat/cold chisel and the largest pin-end/punch—got both bolts loosened and extracted in about 10 minutes, whereas with the flathead and prybar, I got nowhere after at least an hour of trying.





Those stupid headless M8 bolts weigh about 1.6 ounces for the two of them... I like weighing stuff:





While hardware store-variety class 8.8 metric bolts are probably strong enough, the OEM bolt is rated 9.8, and since that spec is very rare outside of automotive supply, I went on a hunt for 10.9-rated M8 x 1.25 bolts that were the right length (for me, 50mm, or double the length of the OEM shear bolts) and inexpensive and easy to get a hold of in a small quantity... I really don't want or need 6 or 10 or 25 of these bolts. The online options via Amazon and eBay tend to black oxide coated, which many reviews said rusted immediately, even without direct exposure to water. The OEM bolts are yellow zinc, so that's what I set out looking for (an engineer friend told me stainless bolts were not the right option, didn't press him for a technical explanation why). Even McMaster-Carr didn't have a perfect option, available singly.

I eventually discovered that surprisingly, the local bricks-and-mortal auto parts store (this time Advance Auto) 2 miles from my house stocked Dorman M8 1.25 class 10.9 yellow zinc 50mm flanged hex head bolts (part # 980445)... what's impossible to tell browsing online is that the listed price of $3.99 isn't for ONE bolt, it's for three... so, easy peasy and dirt cheapy. Cheap bastard tip: if you order them online (for pickup at store), there's almost always a 15%-off coupon code you can use for Advance Auto:





For the actual "spacers," I decided using washers would allow me to easily fine tune or adjust the amount of the steering wheel lowering, plus 5/8" SAE zinc-coated washers are very cheap... I got them at Lowe's, I don't remember how much they were but I think around 10 cents each. Yes, the 5/8" opening washers are a tiny bit loose around the M8 bolt, but it really doesn't matter.

The downside to using washers instead of a proper spacer is that it'd be really difficult to try to stack the many loose washers on top of the bolt end while upsidedown under the steering column, so I used 3M spray adhesive to glue my 12 washers per bolt together, and then it was cake to just stick the whole thing into the gap... but if it turned out to be too much spacer, it would be simple to peel washers off the stack, one at a time.



For my car, with a fairly low Sparco race seat + a 12.9" (327.7mm) small-diameter Driven Circuit steering wheel, a related objective to getting the steering wheel down where it felt more natural was to be able to see the speedo and tach better... at 5' 10", previously with the steering column at OEM bus-driver angle, the rim of the steering wheel effectively blocked the tops of both key gauges. So, I wanted to get the wheel down enough that I could see the 9-to-3 o'clock areas of the gauges.

This ended up needing about 13/16" (20.6mm) worth of spacer, which required a stack of 12 5/8" washers per bolt... the bolts on the scale aren't the Dorman yellow-zinc 10.9s, but you can still see that lowering the column will add less than a quarter pound to the car:



Note that whatever distance you drop the column at the mounting point will equate to a much larger amount of lowering at the steering wheel rim... I didn't anticipate this, so I initially thought I was going to have to add over 1.5" of spacer/bolt length. Lol.

Okay, so here're the Dorman bolts installed... I torqued them to 26 lb/ft, which is probably a bit too much (this website suggested maximum torque for a class 10.9 M8 bolt is 30 lb/ft) and used blue Loctite to ensure they won't ever loosen on their own:





And this is a picture showing the steering wheel height with my phone held roughly at my head position:



From that angle, weirdly you can't see what my view of the gauges is with the wheel lowered like that, which is more like this... this is a huge improvement from before:



This view might give you a better idea of the angle of the steering column now:



The "before" pic was taken at a different angle, but still provides reference. I estimate that I dropped the steering wheel about 1 5/8":

[SpecialED]

Okay, here's the nonessential stuff I did to pretty up the steering column lowering...

Moving down the steering column significantly opens up a big gap between the top of the column cover and the dash under the gauge cluster.

So, I used 1" wide and thick gray foam insulation strip, cut it roughly to size, spraypainted it with flat black Krylon, and stuck it into the gap:












Another unintended effect of lowering the column a bunch is that the under-dash trim piece also won't fit right, because the bottom of the column cover now runs into it... it's especially bad on the right side, slightly above and behind the key cylinder:






So, I took the lower dash trim piece off again, and trimmed off about 6mm (just under 1/4") of the lip around the cutout for the column cover using a rotary tool and a big (probably 1/2" diameter) carbide bit:




After trimming:




Not perfect, but definitely better than before trimming the column opening... good enough for me. If you want it to fit exactly like factory, you're probably have to take 8–9mm of material out of the lower dash trim opening:











Also, I forgot to mention earlier: for USDM E36 M3 owners, if you want an easy 3.63 lb weight savings that doesn't make your interior uglier, this is a great time to ditch that sheet metal and foam "absorber" behind the lower dash trim:




LASTLY, you may have noticed the steering column lock has been drilled out on my car... here are my pics and notes about that side project in another ancient-history-of-E36-DIY-fixes bimmerforums thread:

https://www.bimmerforums.com/forum/s...7#post30759957

[circuit.heart]

Nice work, I love the spray glue trick. Especially if you replaced the rubber steering guibo with a metal U-joint there's no losing here, just all win. I'd love to do the same with my E34 but we don't have an easy way to replace the rubber guibo and preloading a 30yo piece of rubber is not a good idea.

[SpecialED]

Nice work, I love the spray glue trick. Especially if you replaced the rubber steering guibo with a metal U-joint there's no losing here, just all win. I'd love to do the same with my E34 but we don't have an easy way to replace the rubber guibo and preloading a 30yo piece of rubber is not a good idea.

Thanks, I actually didn't anticipate how hard it would be to stick the washers in between the column mount and the column one at a time until I tried it... so I had to come up with a different strategy.

I didn't replace the rubber steering-column guibo, didn't learn about that until after all this column-lowering monkey business... after reading through this thread where someone said they replaced the rubber guibo with the E34 OEM all-metal U-joint and didn't feel a difference/improvement, I'm not sure it's something I absolutely need to do. I'm actually happy with the steering feel on my E36 (although I do wish the rack ratio was faster, for autox duty)—I have a F80 M3 to serve as a point of comparison for what driving a car with completely numb, zero-feedback steering feel is like!

[circuit.heart]

I didn't replace the rubber steering-column guibo, didn't learn about that until after all this column-lowering monkey business... after reading through this thread where someone said they replaced the rubber guibo with the E34 OEM all-metal U-joint and didn't feel a difference/improvement, I'm not sure it's something I absolutely need to do. I'm actually happy with the steering feel on my E36 (although I do wish the rack ratio was faster, for autox duty)—I have a F80 M3 to serve as a point of comparison for what driving a car with completely numb, zero-feedback steering feel is like!

It's not for steering feel, just a durability concern - at least on the E34, changing the angle of the column will preload the guibo so it will actually have to flex more and work harder than it's designed to. That's guaranteed to fail early, though "early" might mean years instead of decades, which is still worth it for a competitive track car.

[SpecialED]

Ah, thank you for the clarification circuit.heart; I'll reconsider installing the all-metal E34 U-joint.