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EDC rebuild update

117K views 558 replies 85 participants last post by  AseanAero 
#1 · (Edited)
A few people have been asking me what's going on with this so I thought I'd update everyone

I was sick to death of this on-going EDC drama so a couple of months ago I started to seriously research a solution. After much searching I found a specialist suspension company who had the ability, but more to the point had the will to help us. These guys have many many years of experience with all manner of road and race suspension, they specialise in rebuilding old Ferrari and Lamborghini shocks amongst other things, and the boss is a good guy which is so important in these situations

Bottom line is that he's willing to help us. He currently has 2 front and 2 rear units in pieces and he's sourcing all of the necessary seals and gas sacs. They have the ability to manufacture their own seals if necessary so he's not anticipating any problems. There's nothing complex in the units and he's quite confident he can turn these around for us. Rebuild units would come totally refurbed, repainted and would be tested on their suspension dyno before being released. This is not just a hydraulics company, this is a bona fide suspension specialist who has all of these facilities in house, blast cabinets, dyno etc etc

The plan is the same as it always was, he'll hold a set of refurbed units in stock, people will buy them from him and pay a deposit which they will get back when they return their own units which will be refurbed for the next person

Target price is £100 per rear leg and £150 per front leg inc. VAT :cool:

I should be able to update you again next week. We will need to get him all of the blown units we have as there will be occasions where a solenoid or hardened shaft is too damaged to re-use so he has to salvage parts from another leg. Having said that, they can source the solenoids direct and manufacture their own rods if necessary but it would put the price up dramatically so while there are so many blown units available they might as well be recycled

More info soon :)
 
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#35 ·
Nice to see you post mister K.

Hope the Ultra-Touring is ok!

Glad to see you haven;t sold it and I think Raymond has dreams left now too :D

Wout
 
#33 ·
Just to clarify, they would be able to rebuild the non-EDC SLS rears as well, correct?

Thanks for the hard work!
-Lloyd
 
#40 ·
***UPDATE***

I've just come off the phone with the owner of the suspension company, all seals have been ordered and should be in early next week. I'm expecting to have the rebuilt rears here late next week. I have sent him a link to this thread to show him the level of interest. The plan is that once I have the rears fitted and have put some miles on so we know that everything's ok, I'll do a proper post explaining the deal and at that point he'll post in the new thread too which will open up communication and allow us to get things moving

Oh, and as expected he didn't see a problem doing the self levelling rears either

More info next week...
 
#48 ·
Congratulations London Mike on all your hard work so far, to just get to this point is an achievement in itself as I am sure that others who dared with such a project shall testify.

Keep us posted on the rebuild status and of any further outcomes.

:cheers:
Gav
 
#49 ·
I've been reading this thread with some delight as one of the previous owners removed the self levelling on my car which has been a source of annoyance since i bought it.
Due to the returning of the old/damaged unit policy i will have to look into sourcing four old corners and how to re-integrate the SLS/EDC.

Good work - I look forward to further updates!!!
 
#52 ·
The first set of re-built rears will be here tomorrow as I was promised and we'll be fitting them tomorrow too with new springs, top mounts etc etc. Because there's a big Ferrari race this weekend the guy has been swamped all week, so he is personally delivering them tomorrow morning for me, about a 200 mile round trip for him. He now has all the seals in that he needs and he said that internally the units were visually pretty much like new. I spoke to him lunchtime and they were just going on the dyno for final testing. This is all looking very good for us for the future, I'll try and grab some pics of the units before we fit them and hopefully do a post tomorrow night to update you all
 
#55 ·
Right, update….

At 8.30am, right on time as promised, the owner of the suspension company turned up in deepest Surrey clutching my rebuilt rears :)

We had a long chat about what he did, what he thought of the EDC set-up and what he thought might be able to be improved. The first thing to realise is that these rears have been rebuilt completely with Boge seals :D He’s not a great fan of the seal design, although they have been rebuilt back to ‘stock’ they could be improved by a more modern seal. It might be a case of if it’s not broke don’t fix it and maybe we should just stick with the set-up but he could maybe fit a better seal set-up for us

I asked him what he thought about changing out just one unit, more specifically about fitting a rebuilt shock (front in particular) with an original unit on the other corner. I was particularly concerned because of the difficulties of matching the oil viscosity and getting the air gap right. He said that he’d feel ok about changing just one unit but his natural inclination would be to overhaul both units on the axle at the same time. He has access to all of the Boge data so he’s comfortable that he can match the spec as they come from BMW. Also if we could provide him with a new front or rear to borrow then he could put it on the dyno and get all of the data that he needed, then we’d be guaranteed an exact match. But now we don’t have to hang on to the ‘still just about ok’ shock and just change just one, at this price it’s perfectly viable to have both units on an axle rebuilt. Infact you can have all FOUR rebuilt less than the cost of a single unit from BMW

As you can see in the pic they have been cleaned up and painted, they look just about as you’d expect a new unit to look. I rebuilt the units with new springs/rubbers/top mounts and we fitted them on. The units that we removed looked like they had been on there since the car was new, no snapped springs or leaks but they were tired to say the least. Driving the car was a revelation, it’s easy to forget about the rears sat back there going up and down but in some ways the results are more impressive with new rears that new fronts. I still have some steering bits to fix so the car is not 100% tight as it should be but the difference over the units we took off is night and day, it’s taught and controlled in a way that I’d forgotten. My P setting has been way too soft for a long time, I don’t remember who posted recently that the P setting is just about perfect on a new set-up but he’s right. I remember when I bought my LE new in 1995, the most impressive thing was the suspension and the 2 modes that just worked so well. Now I have that back again, P is a perfect driving around mode now it’s tight and controlled again, and S just tightens the whole thing up a lot more

I’ve only done about 30 miles so it’s early days. No leaks, dash warnings or funny noises. I’ll continue to test them for the next couple of hundred miles to check that they are performing ok, then speak to the suspension guy to see how we can open this up for everyone. Now the rear’s aren’t rocket science, they are just a couple of hydraulic rams with no gas sac or air gap considerations. But he’s very confident that the fronts will pose no real problems and I feel very comfortable that he knows what he’s talking about. We might need a guinea pig to try out a rebuilt set of fronts (form an orderly queue :D ) just to check they perform ok but this whole situation is pretty much ready to kick off. I gave him 2 more fronts I had and I have the rears for him too. Once we’re rolling it would be good to get all of the scrapped units up to him as occasionally he’ll need to scavage parts like rods or solenoids so the more the merrier, but for now he has enough to keep him going

On a slightly more annoying note, we went to all the effort of swapping out the front right leg for the almost-new one on my spare car only to find that my clunk is still there which means that there’s a 1993 car with a complete set of 4 working EDC legs as mine was obviously ok. Ho hum, all the steering’s being changed in a couple of weeks so the new top arm should cure it but this clunk is driving me mad :D

There ya go, looking good, eh? :)
 

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#57 ·
Lets keep our fingers crossed Mike and hope they still feel good after a few thousand miles. If so, then you and your engineer will have taken a massive weight off owners shoulders..mine especially....I'll have 4 please!!!! thanks for your efforts again steve
 
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