Similar to the issues that the E36 and E46 rear subframe mounts have, the front strut towers are notorious for cracking. We find this happens often especially when using coil overs with camber plates and stiff springs. This particular car had some cheap aftermarket camber plates installed with a fairly poor design. The flaw we noticed was that they had a very sharp edge turning the front suspension almost into a knife that would cut through the strut towers thin steel whenever a bump was hit.

To repair this car we used BMW sourced strut tower reinforcement plates which can be bought at the dealer or through us. Most people will simply place these plates between the camber plates and the bottom of the strut tower which is usually adequate. However since this car already had two cracked strut towers we decided to go the extra mile and rosette weld the plates to the strut tower for a more secure solution. Having the reinforcement welded to the strut tower makes future work on the suspension easier and ads some structure to the strut tower itself. This is the same method we use on the rear subframe reinforcement plates. From there we used TIG weld all the crack slowly and carefully to make sure they won’t crack in the future. Our ultimate goal is to make the strut tower look, at first glance, as if the damage never happened. This car had some pretty severe damage so that wasn’t quite possible.

If you have any questions on reinforcing your E36 or E46 Chassis please give us a call at (949) 667-4397