My E30ix

[maximumangle]

Wow! fantastic and clean!! loving the h&r/bilstein setup. i am def planning on doing it for mine now

[bmk]

Looks great! Cant wait till I paint my ix

[JBird]

Man! There's a lot of nice, clean e30's in CA. That car looks near perfect~!

[EyExR]

IX's dont have center support bearing in the drive shaft ,its a one piece shaft (shorter) due to T-case

they do whine a lot more than a standard E30 also due to extra components of the AWD system(its all right under your seat) ,something you just live with...

Really? Strange because that came straight from Real OEM...

[MKorodini]

thanks jbird. The paint is a little hazy, but cleans up perfect with a good wax. Overall I'm stoked with the car. I actually found it up by you. It was in storage in a barn in Eugene for years. A guy bought it from the barn guy and he didn't have the time nor money to invest into it. (he had a NICE s4 he sank all his dough into)

[dogsbark26]

Originally the IX has a vicous rear differential. My pinion bearings were whining like a baby. I decided to go with an lsd clutch pack 40% lock up diff meant for an M3. It's the same 3.91 gear ratio (manual) as the front diff so I won't burn up the transfer case. I found a guy on ebay http://www.ebay.com/itm/220856957245...#ht_500wt_1116 The diff looks good but it took about 2 weeks longer than he said it would. He made up for it with great communication. I'm gonna jack up all four tires and see if I can track down the noise with a stethoscope and someone holding it at 30mph. But the noise now is nothing like it was so I'm way happier.

So... any detectable difference with the LSD? Why did you do this? Were you trying to solve a problem? I guess I mean: What is the advantage of a LSD?

Haven't done any wheel bearings yet. They seem ok. I'm hoping to dive into a turbo setup some day. dogsbark26, I figured out the rear diff was making a bunch of noise by jacking up all four wheels, getting it to 30 mph and using a stethoscope to pinpoint it. When I took it apart I found the pinion bearings were bad. I'm rebuilding it now and plan to keep it as a spare. I'm gonna try and switch out the viscous pack with a clutch pack ( I dunno if they are interchangeable???).

Thanks for sharing that method. I'll have to give it a try.

[MKorodini]

dogsbark, the ix comes with an lsd but it's a different design It's a viscous type and from what I've read it is not as aggressive as a clutch pack. It's more geared towards driving in the snow and rain and the clutch pack type is more geared towards handling curves. That's what I've come up with after hours and hours of reading stuff on here, bimmerforums, and e30tech.

I haven't pushed the car yet so I haven't taken note of any performance gains. I went this route for 2 reason. One, to rebuild the viscous lsd would cost wayyyyy too much money. Secondly, I figured the clutch type setup is more usable to me. I live in central coast cali so I'll be using the car more for spirited driving rather than playing in the snow and rain.

[dogsbark26]

Thanks MKorodini. Perfectly reasonable analysis and logic.

[litu]

Nice one ix

[MKorodini]

No prob dogsbark.

Thanks Sade!!!