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M3 Strut Tower Bar Install

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Why add a strut tower bar?
The strut towers flex under hard cornering, so adding a cross brace helps to eliminate some of that body roll. Another good reason is that BMW strut towers are farily week and will deform if you hit a big pothole, so adding a reinforcement is always a good idea. Finally, they just look good, which might be good enough for you.

Difficulty
This is not really a difficult job and merely involves loosening and tightening a few bolts. If you can work a wrench you can do this one.

Parts Needed
OEM M3 Strut Tower Bar Kit $260 (This will come with everything you need in order to complete the installation and has multiple part numbers. Just ask for the kit and you will get everything you need)

Tools Needed
Micro Torque Wrench (It needs to be able to do 18 ft-lbs accuratley)
13mm sockets and wrenches

Instructions

Open the hood Install the brackets

Open the hood and remove the strut tower bolts and install the brackets 1. Open the hood and loosen the 6 bolts on top of the strut towers. Set them aside for the moment. 2. Place the braces on top of the two strut towers. 3. Finger tighten the three supplied deep bolts onto the strut tower.

Locate the rivet to be undone Bend it out of the way Properly install the bracket

Bend the assembly out of the way for the passenger side 4. The passenger side has the hood sensor and battery terminal in the way. Undo the plastic rivet and bend the battery terminal up to slide the passenger side bracket in place 5. Once you have got it in finger tighten the supplied bolts

Add the cross brace Tighten everything down

Add the cross brace and tighten everything down 6. Add the cross bar onto the two brackets and finger tighten the brace. 7. Using either newly supplied 13mm nuts, or your old ones that we took off in the first place, finger tighten the cross brace. 8. Using a micro torque wrench, tighten all of the 13mm nuts to 18 ft-lbs. 9. Add the nut covers and ///M dust caps to the brackets and enjoy!

Review and Conclusions

It looks good and as far as I know its doing its job. My suspension was already good, so I can't really tell if it's doint anything major. The better question is why not?