Vorshlag E46 and E46 M3 Strut Tower Reinforcement Plates
This is a pair of strut tower reinforcement plates for the BMW E46 and E46 M3.
The BMW E46 strut towers are notoriously thin and easily damaged. With these aftermarket, stamped steel reinforcements placed under the towers, you are effectively doubling the thickness of the tower - to help resist damage from large impacts.
Above shows what a typical E46 strut tower looks like after decades of abuse. That is fixable, and these plates only make it strong. We put these tower reinforcements on every BMW E46 we build, because it is cheap insurance.
THESE ARE NOT CERTIFIED BMW
In years past we could purchase these from BMW, and they twice cost as much as what we are charging here. They had a BMW decal and part number on the back, but those are either difficult to find or No Longer in Production (NLA)
This is a picture of a certified BMW part, above. They look exactly like these aftermarket versions, and fit just as well. So that's what we can source now, and the cost is 1/2 what it was a decade ago. Win-Win.
MAKING YOUR TOWERS B0MB PROOF!
We had a customer in the past with an E46 M3 track only car, and he had a big "off" that damaged his strut towers. We had to weld up a crack, flatten the towers (they were mushroomed), then we went an extra step.
We then added these E46 stamped strut tower reinforcements, and we could have just stuck them under the tower and left them there. But he was moving to W2W racing, so we went the extra mile...
First, we prepped the underside of the tower - cleaning away undercoating and seam sealer. We used an air powered wire wheel tool called the "Crud buster". It made quick work of this.
The real fun was next - stitch welding these reinforcements to the underside of the tower. We of course cleaned away the black "e-coating" on the edges before welding.
After the weld was finished we covered the edges with seam sealer and painted the entire underside of the tower.
After repairing the crack on the top side, and flattening the top surface, the weld from the underside is visible as well. This thing is now VERY strong.
We masked the area and hit all of the top side of the tower with zinc enriched primer. That's as far as the customer wanted to go, as it was a race car. You can of course paint in a matching color for a seamless repair and upgrade. A strut tower brace on the top sandwiches the camber plate and makes this whole assembly stronger than ever.
A few months later the same car was involved in a car-on-car accident in a wet W2W race, and the contact ripped the right front corner off the car - broke the wheel, control arm, steering rack, snapped the strut in half, fenders and door damaged, etc.
Amazingly the reinforced strut tower was 100% intact - after the strut was violently RIPPED out of the tower! This was a testament to the effectiveness of this upgrade.
We helped repair the car and with some paint work, it looked as good as new. Now we're not saying these reinforcements will protect the BMW E46 strut towers from ANY damage, just makes them a whole lot stronger than stock.
