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When I first saw these rear shock tower reinforcements from the BMW Z3 I thought to myself; "What good could these possibly do on the top of the shock tower? All the loads are coming up from the bottom." Just a little further thought caused me to realize my error. In actuality, with many shocks the majority of the damping forces are produced in rebound, not in compression. And in rebound a shock will be pulling down on the shock tower, not pushing up. How are the forces from the rear shocks fed into the shock towers? Well for the compression forces pushing up on the tower you have the entire surface area of the rear shock mount to spread out the load. But for the rebound forces pulling down on the tower you generally only have two small washers acting to spread out the load. This ends up being quite a stress concentration and could lead to eventual fatigue cracking of the towers. The Z3 reinforcement plates alleviate this condition by spreading out the load in rebound, as well as in compression. |
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The part number for the Z3 rear shock tower reinforcement is: p/n 51 71 8 413 359 I do not know the cost but believe that it was quite inexpensive. |
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