Z3 engine brace

[Kiboko]

I often hear the recommendation to fit an engine brace to my 2.2i, (I believe they were fitted as standard to the 2.8). Looked them up on eBay and found various different makes around the £130 mark, none of them official BMW original equipment, but one of them claims it's better than any others for various reasons which make sense and are quite believable. Are they still available as a dealer fit option, secondly, are they really worth having, - and three, are they easy to fit yourself? The ones for sale on eBay claim to be easy to fit with nothing more than a spanner. There are nuts which need undoing and the item goes over the top then the nuts are done up again but is there a need to ensure a correct torque, using a torque wrench? (haven't got one and wouldn't know how to use one). If I undid the nuts it would be just my luck to find the bolts then fell through underneath! (or are they fixed in place when youy remove the nuts)?

[BladeRunner919]

No Z3 had them as standard. The nuts hold the shock absorbers in place, so probably wise to ensure they are torqued up correctly.

However, before you worry about things like braces, are all your suspension components up to scratch? You could easily be running around on 15-year-old shocks and bushes - that sort of thing is far more important that braces.

[Joycey]

To answer your question Kikobo no your bolts wont fall out if you removed the nuts, providing the cars not in the air. The weight of the car will keep them firmly in place. The threads come from the suspension top mounts.

Lee