Chriseracleous

hello all,

I know there are many threads on here some a little outdated.

I am looking to lower the car 40mm all around maybe more on coilovers depending on responses. It seems the only way to do this is by removing the air suspension completely and going for coilovers or lowering the air on the rear and using springs up front.

does anyone know if there is a way to bypass the self levelling sensor with plugging in something to the sensor to trick it in to thinking it’s working or is it a case of coding only ? Equally if I was to go down the route of lowering on air what tool do I need to do it?

is there anywhere in the uk that could code the message out ?

Any help is appreciated.

it’s a E61 530d btw I am looking for.

spectre6000

Front lowering springs are around $250, and you just put them on when you replace your front struts as part of the basic job.

For the rear, there was a guy somewhere online a while ago that rigged up some replacement air suspension height level sensor linkages using stuff out of the McMaster catalog or some such. Threaded rod, some set nuts, little ball joint ends, and some kind of lock nut. Nothing complicated about it, but I'm sure you'd end up having to order various parts in quantity to where you end up with an annoying number of random hardware bits leftover at the end. It was an old thread, and I'm sure he's not selling them anymore, but that's the route I'll be going as soon as I get through the repairs and deferred maintenance on my own new-to-me E61. This keeps everything stock and happy, and can easily be reversed in maybe a half hour with simple hand tools.

An alternative to this that is cheaper (not that that first option is all that expensive) is that you can supposedly reprogram the height of the air suspension. I haven't gotten into the programming side of things yet, so can't speak to this at all.

Chriseracleous

So by creating what you described for the rears eliminates dash error ?

spectre6000

My understanding of the system (and there are certainly many people out there who know this better than I) is that the self-leveling system adds/subtracts air from the air springs based on a level position sensor. That sensor is a little black box mounted to the underside of the body with an arm sticking out of it on a pivot, and from there goes down to a mounting point on the suspension via a linkage. From stock everything, if you shorten the linkage, it'll drop the arm down such that it thinks it's sitting high. It'll air down until the sensor reads that it's where it is supposed to be. Everything is operating as it should, so no codes to throw. With the described adjustable linkage, you can raise/lower the set height of the air suspension by loosening the lock nuts, twisting the threaded rod in the middle, then re-tightening the set nuts. The car will see it as load being added/removed, and just raise/lower the rear suspension accordingly as BMW's engineers intended.

habbyguy

I did use INPA (or ISTA?) to lower / adjust my E61 rear suspension. Getting to the menu and figuring it out was fiddly, but it can be done. I did just do a minor adjustment to get the car riding level, not a major change like a huge drop (might - and probably should) be outside the "normal adjustment process".

Chriseracleous

Appreciate the responses will need to look at this option of lowering the linkage.

spectre6000

Too bad you're in London, or I'd offer to split the McMaster bill with you...

Island Road

If your just running springs in the front all you need to do is use ISTA+ and re-calibrate the ride height. New linkage is only needed if for those that don't use the software. It's free all over the internet.

Chriseracleous

Found these apparently straight install and tricks the sensors after messaging the seller. Hope this helps. I would love to use insta+ but just not confident with completely f******g up the car.

spectre6000

That's exactly the setup (and probably the same guy) I was referring to earlier. Thanks for finding that! Bookmarked, and I'll probably order a set of those when I order struts and springs here in a month or so.