I5 is miserable in every car. Don’t waste your time and money trying to fix that

I found I-5 palatable in my 95 Lexus LS400 that I had! It was quite content :)

Yeah I’m kind of used to driving in the US. I’m doing a road trip next month to Portland with the fam…

The i5 was bearable in the E46 330ci, even with 95a poly bushings, lack of window gaskets, and mostly gutted. In the FK8, it makes me want to shoot myself. I've never cared about NVH, but in this car, I realize why it's such an important measurement - cause this car doesn't try to meet any form of NVH reduction whatsoever.

50K japanese junk. I swear the shitbox e36 m3 would probably do better.

Let's rent a Rolls and find out for sure.

Come on, guys? I've driven down the I5 to the Ridge in my Miata with metal engine mounts and 200TW tires. I had to wear earplugs, but it was fine~

Gosh we're all getting soft LOL~

Here are some cars I have personal experience with on the i5 concerete (other than teh soft top Beetle/Mustangs.
My daily was an S2000 on RE71R, my ear drums are ok for now

I find the A5 Sportback and especially the A4 Allroad meaningfully worse than the A4 Sedan cuz of the open rear...
especially if it's the prestige trim sedan with the dual pane laminated glass (63dB at 70mph exact same as W222 Maybach in C&D testing, quieter than LS600h & similar to Cullinan, Phantom, S8 and I-Pace at 62dB)

Mk7.5 Golf R got 72dB (roughly 2X louder vs the A4 Prestige). FWIW I've road tripped mk7 8 hours in a day in Ontario and it was fine imo.
FK8 gets 76dB (roughly 3X louder than the A4P).

No need, base trim Dodge Charger on the Michelin Energy Savers will do fine (68dB at 70mph) for 6 hours drive.... even in Oregon where the concrete's even worse
Dual pane THICC laminated front glass standard, seats benchmarked Lexus LS430. Ironically, acoustic glass is an option for current E class, not available on the C.

Base RAM1500 does 65dB.

ive done some long drives like almost 1600km in one day that to most people would be torture

the most important thing is seat, it has to fit you well

almost everything else like tire noise and the odd rattle can be rectified by earplugs

adaptive cruise would also go very far

We are planning on going to see some central Washington state sights like dry falls, Hanford reach, Ellenburg, etc. the geography looks almost Utah like so I’m totally stoked on exploring it.

I’m hoping these highways aren’t as noisy and hopefully paved. Otherwise 7+h drive to Spokane is gonna suck.

Ancient Lakes a great hike too.
Be careful of the cops out there; esp around Ellensburg.
Soon as you start going downhill over the pass is when the cops start ticketing

Installed tint!

https://i.ibb.co/dG8ktMQ/PXL-20230224-002630186.jpg

Where ? It’s so light you can barely see it.

-4 degree cold start tune touch up.

OOOF back to winter mode... but this works out for me... i have wheel/tire protection package and one of the 20s has a mild curb mark.. gonna get it repaired while its off the car.


https://i.imgur.com/Z10neH7.jpg

lol

It does look light from the pictures...it's front 50% rear 20%. Going to have to take a closer look the next time the sun is out.

how are the threads holding up on the bolts.

Installed this tunnel brace in the MR2!

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...96618f3e_h.jpg

I've been fighting with the ride height of my car for a while now and I'm slowly losing my mind (and wallet). When I first put in the stock springs with new struts/mounts/isolators and 1" spacers in 2019? or so the car sat level and it was great. After doing a TSD event the rear hunkered down and won't go back up. I've emptied the trunk and reset the control arms a couple times and it still sits only 0.5" higher than stock. While resetting the arms again I had the sway bar unbolted and when I went to put it back I noticed that it doesn't line up evenly, I have to connect one end and then jack up the hub on the other side to get the bolt in. No clue what's going on there, my hope is just that the garage floor isn't level enough or something.

To try and at least get the car to sit level I took a spacer out of the fronts so they now have a 0.5" spacer. Reset the control arms, settled the suspension, etc and the drivers front still sits at 1" above stock and more concerningly the passenger front is 1.5" above stock. I've measured it front a couple different points in case the fenders are wonky and it's the same, 0.5" higher on the passenger side. I don't think the springs are side specific but I pulled both struts out (they look and measure identical) and swapped the whole assemblies so now the drivers front strut is on the passenger front side of the car and vice versa and the passenger side is still 0.5" higher. I slapped them in loosely so the swaybar is disconnected at both ends, the control arm nuts are loose, etc. As far as I can tell the only things that control ride height are the strut assembly, the strut tower, and the knuckle so again I have no clue what's going on, if any of you guys do please share. It's just a mac strut so not exactly fancy.

At this point I've half given up and decided to just replace the front strut mounts because the drivers side has gotten very sloppy, ditch the front spacers and swap the springs side to side because why not. I stripped the front strut assemblies apart and found that the passenger damper seems to be bad, it's not totally blown but it's way easier to compress than the drivers side, it comes up way more slowly and it doesn't extend fully on its own. I also found the bearing in that mount has a bit of play too, not as bad as the drivers side but I'm glad I ordered 2 new ones. I'm not very impressed with KYB at the moment, that's 1 bad damper and 2 bad mounts in under 10k km. At $50/piece that's not good value either. I should probably pull the rears too and see if they're bad as well.

http://i.imgur.com/qfB4PRs.jpg

I know old cars have problems but is it really too much to want a car that sits level and brand name parts that don't disintegrate? I'm half tempted to just slap it back together and order the individual pieces to make coilovers to my own specs but if I can't even get a spacer lift to sit level there's no way I'll be able to do that correctly.

Ouch, that sucks.

What alternatives do you have when it comes to shocks other than KYB?

The extra annoying part is I tried to keep it simple to avoid this kind of thing. I didn't use MR2 inserts or Subaru inserts or any of the other funky things people have done. I went with the most straightforward setup and ended up with 3 different ride heights, all of which are wrong, and a bunch of broken parts.

For replacements I can get FCS or Monroe for $30/ea, KYB or Sachs for $50/ea, or Bilstein for $200/ea plus shipping and crap. Or get into gravel coilovers for $2k US+.

I've had good experience with Bils and has had it on two of my cars. Get just the shocks though, whoever that they contract to build their springs suck.

I run FCS on my 04 Mini. Good bang for buck. Not sure if ride height is consistent or not. The car has over 325,000 KM now. :p

Since you swapped them left to right.. you either bent something or it’s the top mount?

The top mounts stayed on the strut when I swapped things around. It was the whole assembly, strut housing, strut insert, spring, and top mount. With those removed I can cycle the control arms and hubs much higher and lower than they can go with them in so I know that's not getting hung up on something.

Which makes me think something is bent, except nothing looks bent, and all the parts you would expect might get bent shouldn't control ride height. So I'm at a loss.

I went ahead and ordered two new FCS inserts for the front. Two of them was only $10 more than one KYB and if dampers are going to be consumed that quickly they may as well be cheap. I'd love to grab Bilsteins, they were great on my Jeeps, but that'd be $400 for the pair. Maybe once I get the height sorted out I'll splurge on nice dampers.