The best we achieved was a bit of time to get the owners out of warranty. They had us balancing the tires on the car under load and even truing tires with some machines that looked like a combination of a belt-sander and a treadmill. Believe me, BMW replaced tires, wheels, shocks, brakes-nearly everything they could think of. I worked at a BMW dealership from 1976 to 1995. Saying it isn't disregards the fact that BMW has been struggling with E28 front-end shimmy, pulsation, brake shake, etc, since the car was first introduced in the U.S. Saying that the E28 is 'more sensitive' than any other BMW model discounts the crap that is the E21 front suspension. Really, I have all those parts ready to go on.

I will be leaving the same old Brembo rotors on that Steve sold me over a year ago because, well, they can't possibly be warped. I'm going to change out both front hubs/bearings, upper and lower control arms, all three tie-rods, steering idler arm, and install new tires and new wheels and new shocks. No difference, other than the plastic rings require more care in handling and wheel install/removal work, to prevent damage to the plastic rings. Time was also expended on testing with both the black plastic (1010tire) and aluminum (TireRack) hub centering rings. Took a day and a half of testing, but this is the problem. We first noticed the vibration on the way to the Concours and again over the past several weeks, before I finally got a chance to locate the problem starting yesterday morning.

I had the wheels off just prior to the BMWCCA Concours, to wash the wheel wells and I put the wheels back on at the upper torque limit. (clean threads, lightly oiled) At 80-83 ft-lbs the vibration appears. Absolutely no vibration at any speed when torqued to 65-70 ft-lbs. Turns out my Style 29 wheels on the E32 rotors (Yoko AVS Sport) don't like to be tightened over the mid-point torque spec of 74 ft-lbs ± 9 ft-lbs. Finally found the problem with the front end vibration at 65 MPH, coming and going most notably in long sweeping curves, where the inner tire changes speed.

Fix a flat front end vibration