You're 1000% right !
To my opinion the people from Empire need to be ashamed immensely !!
Me, my wife, and our dog can call ourselves very lucky that we're still alive.
This is the most dangerous construction, special on a car like this with ZERO protection.
You would think you get a very quick email from Empire that they aware of the problem and an advice NOT to drive any more meter with this stuff.
And they would tell you that they working on a safe solution as soon as possible.
But NO, even till now you hear nothing from them, they only say that the breaking forces need to be extremely high till it breaks and thats not possible with a M3W. (see the post of Paul Jacobs).
That's the same as telling long cancer can't come from smoking.
When I got my risers, the ones on Gulf fitted like it should be.
But in my wife's car they didn't fit at all.
I got the recommendation to go to a local machinery shop and let them make the tapers smaller !
How much ? Nobody know.
This because MMC uses two different sizes of taper holes !
So will my new machines tapers fit the hole ?
How much chance you give me ?
Yes the solution which Dan Lockwood discribes could be a better solution (but I'm not an engineer).
To mine opinion the safest way is to use the comfort kit from MMC.
Empire charged me a lot of money for two VERY UNSAFE products.
If I look to the solution who Dan describes this would cost Empire only pennies.
The postage would be almost more expensive for them
Empire you're very lucky that no casualties are (till now).
And Empire like I said in the beginning you need to be ashamed immensely with this behavior.
Selling very unsafe products, not sending emails out after you found out ( so far as I know the first who had this was Black Adder beginning 2015 or even 2014 and you asked him to keep it quiet ), and secondly not providing us with a free upgrade and replacement.
Laurens, you are correct, the simplest thing to do would be to just use the Comfort Kit from MMC and go about your driving fun.
I do have a question and I think Molly said it in her write up many months ago, but the upper top plate support from the heim joint on top of the MMC spacer, does this just go under the upper ball joint? I'm assuming that's a yes.
If so, do you assemble everything with the MMC new top support plate loosely held in place with the ball joint not tight while you tighten the thru bolt on the steering parts, and THEN tighten the ball joint back down?
My only reason to do the quick sketch of a "possible" replacement for the Empire kit was to offer another solution in lieu of going to the MMC comfort kit. But with everything as its turned out, the MMC kit is probably the safest and proven best "fix" for the poorly designed Empire stud spacer assembly.
Has anyone measured the taper of the steering arms on a M3W? If we knew the upper wide diameter and the lower smaller diameter, I could throw it into AutoCAD and tell you what it is. Of course the thickness of the steering arm would be needed.
Most tapers as I've seen are 7 or 10 degrees. Usually 7 on the steering and 7 or 10 on ball joints; at least on this side of the pond...
Again I only tossed out the alternative concept as something to think about, not as gospel. Not having any skin in the game, my thoughts are usually irrelevant at best...
As one last thought, on changing over to the new M3W front spindles, why would MMC make the new spindles with the newly higher positioned steering arm differently so the front inner fender brace mount would have to be a new design? It would obsolete their stock and they would now have two styles of front fender braces.
If someone were to ask me without any previous knowledge, I would "assume" that the steering arm was raised on the spindle upright to be in correct alignment with the rack gear outer tie rod AND the fender brace mount would be designed to stay in the same relative location as it was before the relocation upward a couple inches. But as you guys know, MMC does not always do things in a logical manner.
I can see front spindles costing a bunch of money and if its only for the purpose of relocating the steering arm to retro fit older M3W's, it would not be worth it to me to do the new style spindles. IF the change requires additional fender braces, that's even worse.
The old spindles could make some interesting book ends though!
