Broken front strut on an E39

It must have been faulty from new. Like yourself, I have never seen a lower spring seat part company from a strut in more decades than I care to remember. Mike.

Do you have any photos of the failed unit yet? Was it the weld failing or the actual spring seat itself which parted company with the strut body?

JB

No

Difficult to tell which at a cursory glance. But I *think* the weld failed.

BMW had a recall on this exact problem on the early E39's in the US. Check bmwtips.com or your dealer to see if your car is affected.

I've done a Google on this and there was a US recall in 2004 for exactly this. The fix consists of adding a support bracket. However, it doesn't seem to have been issued in the UK. No surprise there, given our smooth as silk roads. ;-)

Was that a general recall, or did it only apply to a specific batch of E39's? Seems an odd fix if it applied to all. More like a bodge than a sound engineering solution. I would have thaught the only real cure would have been to replace the struts with ones having an improved spring seat fixing. Mike.

Just says 1997 5 Series front suspension.

Indeed.

I assume they did do this on later units.

Oh dear. Sounds like it applies to the first of the E39's. Mine is a late '96, with

I remember when doing my '96 E38 that I thought that the spring seats didn't seem too strong but they too haven't failed yet.

On the E39 the strut and seat are aluminium alloy. And yes, the seat doesn't look strong enough.