One of the pitfalls of being the first to modify any car is that you’re often the first to try new products. With the first modified BMW 135i in the US – we cheated and got a pre-delivery car from BMW NA – we inevitably had to wait for many products to be made available and also had to use some ingenuity to make new products work.

Prior to our recent developments that will be unveiled in the June 2009 issue of eurotuner magazine, our modifications we limitied to, among other things, H&R’s excellent Street coilover kit and its sway bar kit.
These parts were fitted and detailed step-by-step both in eurotuner magazine and here at our website – www.eurotuner.com

While working on the car recently, we were surprised to discover both our stock factory sway bar end-links had broken on the front suspension. These stock parts link the H&R sway bar to the H&R strut assemblies.
As you can see in the photos, the end-links first started to bend before finally snapping into two pieces. This has obviously rendered the front sway bar ineffective because it’s no longer connected to the car.
We can’t report when this happened or how it occurred but clearly these end-links were under considerable strain prior to failing.
We spoke to BMW specialists Turner Motorsport in Amesbury, MA. The company had supplied the H&R parts and uses similar equipment on its racecars. They were also surprised that both sides had failed, suggesting that it could have been caused by the very low ride height.
Our BMW 135i does indeed sit very low. However, it was at the maximum height allowed by the H&R Street coilovers. To rectify this, the company had actually sent us taller front springs to allow us to raise the front of the car, but we hadn’t got round to doing it yet...
We will fit the new springs when we receive the new adjustable sway bar end-links from Turner Motorsport that promise to be stronger than the stock links. These end-links sell for $155.99 and are a direct replacement.
Anybody with aftermarket sway bars on their lowered BMW 1-Series might wish to take a look under their car to ascertain the health of their own end-links.
We will detail the installation of these new parts in a future issue of the magazine.