BMW F80 M3 Competition Adjustable CAMBER Plates TESTED EP5

[@ShogunsDojo]

This is the one I’ve been waiting for! I have an M240i and much of the suspension works in a similar way. I cannot believe a single component gave a net 9 second increase in pace, that is unbelievable and evidences how critical proper alignment/geometry is when pushing on track. I’ve done all the other chassis bits including the diff, subframe inserts, springs and dampers front strut brace and F8X front lower control arms and tension struts. I’ve always suspected camber plates would finally give the car the front end it really needs, this video is proof of that. Outstanding work keeping all variables other than the one component equal, it’s not easy to do and I appreciate the effort taken to present empirical data.

[@SuspensionSecrets]

Thanks for the comment! Yea the difference was massive! Its important to note that I’m not a professional driver so the gains are two fold in that the levels of confidence were massive once the plates were fitted and I no longer needed to guess what the front end was going to do. Well worth upgrading 👍 we have recently listed our M240i camber plates too 👍 shop.suspensionsecrets.co.uk/products/suspension-secrets-adjustable-camber-caster-plates-bmw-f22-m235i-m240i

[@SuperExige]

The short answer is that I can report, No NVH and No knocking. I had the Suspension Secrets camber plates fitted this Thursday gone, and so I feel the question deserves a little more detail. I have a totally standard, 5 year old M2, bought from new. I’m old school, I wanted to talk to Matt face to face, so a few weeks ago I phoned and arranged to meet him. He was generous with his time and answered all my questions, giving advice as to how each component would benefit the handling. I had initially only gone over to speak to him about having my alignment done, but as we know, you can’t dial in any negative camber up front. So, before I left, I booked myself in to have the camber plates fitted as well as having the alignment. Then I jumped down the rabbit hole 😂 I rang Matt the following day and said let’s do the rear toe arms, to which he said they would be a great addition to dial in the necessary toe needed on the rear for the camber settings. The following day I phoned Matt again, to add the solid front control arm bushes, to which he said, now you have all the right bits, which all work well together, as a whole, making a vast difference for a fast road setup…because that’s what I want, my car to handle well and give more feedback so I know what’s going on at the wheels, as close to a go kart like feel as I can get from this car, and inspire confidence on fast A/B roads, with an occasional trackday thrown in, but 99% my car is and will be a daily driver. Come the day, I was greeted by Jack & Jordan. Matt and Alex worked on my car. I had the Suspension Secrets camber plates, solid front control arm bushes, rear toe arms and an alignment to dial everything in. After the work was finished Matt showed me the components that had been fitted, spoke about the alignment that had been done and why it had been set up the way it had and explained what I should experience out on the road. He said any problems, call us!! But I will say after a day of driving the car, there is one huge issue with it….. REGRET….. that I wish I had done this at least 3 years ago. I can’t believe I drove it on the factory alignment for 5 years🤦🏽‍♂️ People chase and crave more power, as I did, when I first bought the car. That’s all I ever researched, as well as coilovers, but then, as time went on I changed my mind. The factory cars can’t put the power down properly on the factory setup, and are not setup for British A/B road blasts, especially when you’re really pushing these cars. We know the factory suspension is not the best for our roads, and this is further compounded by the factory alignment, which is setup with a bias towards understeer. In my humble opinion, the power these M cars have is more than adequate for our roads. That power, paired with these extremely well thought through and designed, very high quality components, manufactured in house by Suspension Secrets, along with Matt’s alignment, transform the road manners of these cars. Even on my stock, factory suspension, the car feels so much better to drive. The more I’ve driven it the more I’m discovering and I’ve only had the work done two days ago. I want to drive it more and more, it’s that much more enjoyable to drive. So much more composed, and even more precise. Gone is the feeling of detachment from the rear, before it felt the front was dragging the back, at least on my car. The front is so communicative now and turn in is quick. The steering feels tighter on turn in and less vague, even though it’s electronic theres a better connection with the front wheels. It just feels like all my inputs are now smoothly transferred to the tyres and I can feel a lot more of what’s going on. I’m not a motoring journalist and it’s hard for me to convey exactly in words the true nature of the transformation, but if you drove a stock car back to back with my car with this setup, you would feel and know what I mean. So, as mentioned I had the work done, and it’s no exaggeration when I say, you will feel the difference within yards of driving away from Suspension Secrets HQ. It is not a placebo effect, like when you pop a performance air filter in and think you can feel the extra 10bhp!! Doing the suspension upgrades and having the car setup properly, rather than concentrating on increasing the power has unlocked the real potential of the car, and allowed me to enjoy the car all over again. Before, when I was pushing it on the back roads, I always felt that the car wanted to throw me off the road on the stock factory setup, and that fact is all well documented by the British motoring press. However, after just incremental changes that Suspension Secrets applied, it’s so much better second time round as it inspires confidence with so much more control. I know It’s only been 2 days, but I’m planning to put the car through its paces over this weekend to explore more of what it has to offer and its limits. The only placebo affect that I can think of is it actually now gives the impression that I’ve actually had more work done than the sum of the parts fitted, dare I say it, but it feels like I’ve had the coilovers fitted. Which leads me onto my new problem now, that I have to find funds to finance all the other trick bits in their catalogue, along with the dilemma of which coilovers to fit to complete the car and get it exactly as I want it. Hope that helps, but if you’re thinking about it, don’t, just get it done, as you’ll only be saying I should’ve done this sooner. Even if it’s just the camber plates, but it makes sense to get the other complimenting components at the same time, to get the full benefit. Finally, I have to give an honorary mention to Jack, for keeping me company for the best part of 4 hours whilst the work was being carried out, and talking about cars, suspension and life in general with me, in between his work of course. Jordan managed to escape me at one point, and buried his head in work😂 Whatever you decide to do, good luck. I for one am glad I went to Suspension Secrets, took Matt’s advice and had the components fitted. I can’t give a bigger better validation for the company and the people that work there. [EDIT] p.s I totally forgot to mention. I originally took the car to BMW for an alignment. They reported that there was a broken rear spring and that the front tie rods had ceased and couldn’t carry out the alignment unless I changed everything out for new parts. I don’t have to tell you what they wanted for the work. I refused as the car drove fine. I then took the car to a national garage chain, whose labour rates were better, so booked it in for the alignment and rear springs, they found that both rear springs were broken, apparently very common on these cars, as Matt testified in his first or second video in this series. They replaced the springs, carried out the alignment on the rear and came stuck on the front alignment as they said the track rods were ceased and would need replacing. I had to go away with a view to buying two new arms and rebooking with them. I wasn’t confident during the alignment process as the information that I was being given didn’t sit well with me, I have researched alignment over the years and know a little bit to know what the average settings need to be front and back. So, I had a rethink, and having contacted Matt some years before, but never going ahead with it, I decided now was the time. Fast forward to the day of the work…Matt adjusted the front toe via the “ceased” track rods, without a hitch. He said there was absolutely nothing wrong with them. Enough said…??!!! I will leave you with that and let everyone make up their own minds.👊🏼

[@SuspensionSecrets]

Wow thank you for such an incredibly detailed piece of feedback on the components, setup and experience! Great to hear you’re enjoying the car to its full potential now. It really is a night and day difference in the chassis and is well worthwhile upgrading! Enjoy the A/B road blasts and we look forward to seeing you again!! Any questions in the meantime feel free to get in touch with us as always 👍

[@AI-Records24]

This is an amazing review! Hope you’re still thoroughly enjoying your new set up😁

[@SuperExige]

@@AI-Records24 most definitely!! Love the way the car turns in, and I’m not even on an aggressive camber. But even more impressive is how you can feel the wheels dig in when you power out of a corner or take a fast sweeping bend. The car goes exactly where you aim it. The rear toe arms have definitely made a significant difference, one that I can definitely attest to confidently. Before when I used to pull out of my drive, steering wheel nearly full lock to turn right out of the drive, on hard(ish) acceleration , the rear left wheel would lose traction, and you could sense the diff and electronics fighting with each other, but now there is none of that drama, you can feel the tyre dig down. The combination of the rear toe arms and Matt’s camber settings, the tyres are providing much more grip. I just want the rest of the components now that are in the catalogue for the M2 to get the full benefits.

[@speedastray17]

Fantastic driving. I would love that kind of extra time savings on my laps. My f80 is already a blast on the track but after 1 year of HPDE (with higher bp brake fluid and upgraded brake pads), camber plates and monoballs were my next step. Glad I came across your channel.

[@SuspensionSecrets]

Thanks for the comment! Yes they’re great fun as standard but a whole lot more once the mods have been added! Our next video features our toe arms too which improved stability substantially 🙌

[@speedastray17]

@@SuspensionSecrets how do all the changes together impact the smoothness of a daily drive? I wonder how much comfort I'd be trading

[@SuperExige]

@@speedastray17 I would say you lose zero comfort, but gain stability, traction and turn in. But each person is different as to where their thresholds are for comfort and tolerances of noise. I personally can hear the difference now of when the car goes from one road surface to another. But I like that, because not only do you hear the road surface change but you can feel the difference now, without it feeling uncomfortable, it’s just at the right level, which helps when pushing on. I personally didn’t buy this car for comfort though, for me, it’s a sports car, and I want it to feel like one. The factory car is a bit of a compromise, and I suppose by adding these components I wanted to make the car feel and drive as a sports car should without compromise, otherwise just leave it as a factory car. Over the years I’ve read drivers reporting knocking after having camber plates fitted, but it’s exactly the opposite with these camber plates, no knocking, even when I’ve stupidly hit a pot hole, the car feels a lot more solid and stable. The car feels tight, tighter and more solid, if that even makes sense to anyone. I don’t think there’s a single person out there, regardless of what car they drive that has a regret, or a negative comment to make about having these, or any one of the components fitted to their car. I personally don’t think it’s possible, as it transforms your car in such a positive manner. For me, best bang for the buck mods, definitely, as I feel that these components will last a long while on the car, and my car is a keeper, so I wanted decent components to go on it, and fitted by a company that are passionate about what they do. It’s such a shame that no one can actually see any of the components when you’re driving by, as they’re beautiful pieces of engineering.

[@fstlnj29]

enjoyed the video and the exercise but without seeing the base lap this proves very little as it could be multiple issues as you refer to braking harder but you would/should lose grip due to the loss of contact patch due to more camber. The trade off should be your vmins in the corners so there is that.

[@markgtrheyes]

Incredible difference. Going to get a more track based alignment for my 991

[@SuspensionSecrets]

It’s well worth doing! Makes for such a fun drive compared to standard 👍

[@michaelbetanzos6172]

Fantastic! Looking forward to see any possible G80 camber plates in the future...

[@SuspensionSecrets]

They are coming 🙌

[@itshappening100]

Massive difference... is this for track only? I don't understand why BMW don't do it like that straight out of the box

[@cwilliams4121]

Hi. A video of your views on the pros and cons of getting wheel alignment done via a Hunter system (e.g. at the local Kwik Fit) would be interesting and useful

[@SuspensionSecrets]

Thanks for the comment. We actually cover this in our wheel alignment video that we posted recently. The short answer is that the only pro is speed. But for some more detail head over and check out the video 👍

[@corkytammy4100]

Excellent Matt, I notice my rear feel loose at times too haha, got camber plates, rear toe arms and suspension. For your track tyre try the a052 they are phenomenal

[@SuspensionSecrets]

Awesome thanks! Quite a few people have said to try the AO52 now so will definitely give them a go! I ended up putting a fresh set of PS4S on for now as they are better suited to the current weather! I’ll be moving to more track focused tyres in the new year 👍

[@corkytammy4100]

@@SuspensionSecrets yeah 4S are decent for daily stuff, but can’t handle the harder stuff as they go too soft after getting hot and litterly scrub away. You will be impressed by the A052 for sure, work well from cold. Or the cup2 are also decent but require a bit of heat in them first

[@My_Auto_Chronicles]

Been looking forward to this one! 🙌 🙌🙌

[@SuspensionSecrets]

As were we! Hope you enjoy it 👍 toe arms are next (already filmed) so won’t be too long

[@mlhj83]

How much more road noise will this transmit? Will there be a knocking noise over bumpy roads from the spherical bearings? Thanks.

[@SuspensionSecrets]

Thanks for the comment. It looks like @mlhj83 has beaten us to it there with a very detailed reply. There is little to no increase in NVH. The best way I would describe it is that you can hear the tyres slightly more under braking but that’s it. We have had ours on the car now for 2000 miles since this video and every mile has been hard road driving and heavy track use (running kerbs a lot) and some of the potholes encountered on the roads made me surprised that the wheels came back out in one piece! And still no knocking or NVH. This is mainly due to the bearing that we are now using the high had taken us over a year to re-engineer into the design and test. It’s one of the largest bearings on the market in camber plate and can handle 4x the loads it should see when in use to prevent it from knocking 👍

[@mlhj83]

What are your thoughts on the caster adjustable thrust arm polyurethane bush vs the camber plates, for an F80 CS that's primarily used on road but requires additional camber. Thanks.

[@SuspensionSecrets]

The camber plates definitely can’t be beaten in terms of performance improvement as the caster bushes offer better steering feel and some camber increase but the F80 chassis is so lacking in camber as standard that they really need the dramatic change that a camber plate has to offer. Even in the roads 👍 The bearing we use in our camber plates is designed to not increase noise or NVH on the roads too making it an ideal upgrade 👍

[@jpg_6]

Fantastic content!

[@TheEddysGarage]

What were the final alignment specs after the plates were installed?

[@hazey888r]

It's a secret apparently...

[@TheEddysGarage]

Must be their secret weapon 😂. Not that I can use their company because I’m in Australia

[@SuspensionSecrets]

Thanks for the comments guys and apologies for the delay! We had a KZbin break over winter. For this day we ran -2.5 front and -1.8 rear. We have since developed these settings and got more aggressive with the car!

[@TheEddysGarage]

Awesome thanks. What toe?

[@TheEddysGarage]

@@SuspensionSecrets what do you run it at now? Much toe?

[@asifmohammad2978]

Can the camber plates come pre set up or do they need to be fitted and setup by yourself? Only alignment unit close to me is bmw.

[@SuspensionSecrets]

We can supply them pre-set upon request if we know what your main usage of the vehicle is. The car would still need aligning afterwards in terms of your toe settings though as this would be knocked out due to the camber change.

[@samellio]

Great vid mate, love that your doing this series👍

[@samellio]

Were the conditions really the same after the plates went in?

[@SuspensionSecrets]

Thanks 👍 yes they were between the two data sets! We had quite limited track footage to show you (hence the wetter earlier morning laps) but we held out for a dry line before we fitted the camber plates so that we could have some accurate before and after data 👍 it never fully dried out for the whole day so we were very happy that the two data sets shared the same conditions

[@samellio]

I’ve never driven F82 without camber plates but am really surprised at how much difference that is, would’ve guessed maybe a second or two on a 2 min track like oulton. It’s going to be so interesting to see how much difference your next stages will make, the plates are going to be the best vfm undoubtedly. At Brands I wouldn’t expect to see more than a few tenths of a second improvement with coilovers. The next best vfm for improving lap times is more power, and only costs about £500, maybe not something you want to do though. If you do go for more power keep the exhaust stock otherwise you’ll have noise issues at some tracks. Please keep the updates coming, so useful to us petrolhead and F8X lovers 👍👍👍

[@SuspensionSecrets]

@@samellio I think with a pro driver before and after the split would have been more like 3/4 seconds as the difference was huge! However, for an ameteur driver like my self the time split was compounded by the additional driver confidence that the front end inspired as it was no longer guess work as to how much front end grip was available and you could place the car exactly where you wanted it which was also a catalyst to pushing harder and faster to get that time difference. I can already tell you that the next upgrade (toe arms) is much more incremental in terms of time advantage. I dont think we will see a gain like that from another single component. We will be searching for more power but only once we have finished all the suspension and brake ,mods.

[@samellio]

@@SuspensionSecretsyou’re far too modest!! Again, I’m really interested in how you get on with rear toe arms as you can only get about 2 degrees camber with the stock stuff. I think 3 degrees would help with more rear grip but haven’t tried it, it’s on the list! You don’t need to change brakes if you want to save some cash, and it might be more helpful for your customers if you run the stock brakes, all you need is decent pads. I friend who instructs at brands recently drove mine and the first thing he said was “you must’ve done a lot to the brakes”… nope they’re just stock with decent pads. The problem with the stock brakes is that they eat pads. So variable but maybe 2.5 full track days at most. They do work though. My biggest problem with F8X is rear grip, front is great but rear not so much. Tyres are biggest factor here for me. Putting decent ones on and it’s a different car.

[@christopherhill2769]

You should put a pro in the car to make this a more real comparison 9 seconds is not a real number with both setups driven to their limits.

[@SuspensionSecrets]

That’s correct and a point we try to make really clear in the video 👍 however, putting a pro in isn’t always the best idea as the vast majority of our customers who will be looking to buy the camber plates will be amateur drivers like myself. Therefore, showing what the plates can do to an amateur driver is much more relatable to our viewers as the confidence that they inspired definitely contributed massively to the added time advantage. We used a pro driver when testing our Porsche GT circuit handling pack and set some really nice time splits there but a huge piece of feedback that we received from our customers was … “yes but he is a pro driver so would I see any difference in the car as an amateur”. This pushed us to make the decision to use an amateur driver for the majority of this series to see exactly what effect the parts have not only in terms of physical and kinematic advantages but also in terms of driver feedback and driver confidence which all compounds to create an overall real world result 👍 A pro driver would have been able to push the stock car even faster and would therefore have had a smaller time split but most drivers would have driven the car to the “safe”limit like I was doing as the front end was so vague it never provided enough feedback in my opinion to push harder. In terms of consistency, all of the drier before laps were within 0.7 seconds of each other (where there was little to no affective traffic) and the after laps were all within 0.6 seconds of each other so the driving was consistent enough to take clear measurable data from for the this comparison 👍 We will be putting a pro in the car when the car is finished to set some times though to see what our final blend is really capable of 👍