Steering not self centering

[TedStriker]

Is it definitely 10, or could it be 12? If the latter it probably requires a spline bit (a.k.a. triple-square bit) - common on VAG group cars.

It is 10 point, just been out to look at a spare rack I have in the garage. Size wise, see what you can work out from the photos. I'd be interested to hear what happens if it's loosened.

 

[TedStriker]

repost

 

[g0rsq]

My aim is to get some grease into the rack. I can get some in at the ends, and hoping to get some in at this point. I can not see it being any different inside than any other BMW steering rack.
If I could get the plastic plug out without damaging it, then I could get some in there.

I reckon a piece of rectangular bar, 17mm x 22mm would fit the spline very well. It shouldn't be very tight. Will see what i can get hold off at work.

 

[TedStriker]

I was thinking a decent size bolt head would likely engage it well enough, then just turn the bolt shaft with mole grips!

 

[g0rsq]

I have just modeled the spline with different shapes, and a 22mm or 24mm hex just wont fit it!
I am going to make a tool to fit it. five 5mm pins on a 23.3pcd should be a good fit.

drill and tap 5 holes for 5mm bolts on pcd 23.3mm into a 5mm thick flat bar

 

[Badger]

Thank you @Madelvic99 for pursuing this (at great expense!) and thanks for all the other contributions. This issue is for me the major negative of the i3 experience. The lack of steering feedback and the stiction detracts massively from the pleasure one expects from placing and adjusting the position of a BMW on the road....and the level of attention necessary to keep it tracking straight on a motorway is fatiguing!!
I do hope there is someway of improving things!! Mine's a 2021 non S with 25kmiles btw.

 

[kaszika]

In case you don't have lane assist, do you have 5DU Park Assistance Package?

 

[pmak]

It shouldn't be very tight. Will see what i can get hold off at work.

AFAIK it is on thread locker, so it can be quite hard to break it loose.

I was thinking about loosening as well, but I didn't find any tool that I could possibly make over to fit well.

Anyway keep your fingers crossed, as tomorrow I have a scheduled MOT where they actually check self centering. I hope that it is gonna make it through as guys should be familiar with this issue. My friend's actually passed a few days ago.

If it won't I have ordered a new old stock rack. I hope it is not gonna be a waste of my money to be honest, as I drove a few i3 lately (with similar milage as mine 50k km, but much younger) and all of them behaved the same in regards to centering...

 

[Madelvic99]

Car back after a week in the dealer and cost (under warranty) of £3k.

New track rod ends, new universal joint at the bottom of the steering column, new steering rack

The $64B question is is it fixed. Honestly not really. First reaction after a 30 minute drive home:

Steering feels much different with quarter of a turn of the wheel, much more obvious self centering and steering feels almost heavy. When I left the dealer it didn't feel like my car. However with minor movements of the wheel at anything over 30mph it feels much the same as before. That is with a tiny amount of lock on it still doesn't feel like it's self centering. Maybe a little better and time will tell but it differs from my other 4 cars (albeit each has a sporty bias) and I've not experienced anything like this I can recall

So what do I deduce from this? The steering can seize up somewhat (my car is 4 and a bit years old with 30k miles) and lube can help, HOWEVER I feel the dead dead-ahead feeling is a symptom of the way the car is engineered. I've learnt that adjusting the caster on the front is the way to improve self centering, but the i3 doesn't have adjustable caster. I do wonder if a highly specialised suspension company like Center Gravity could alter the steering affect, maybe taking suspension setup outside the manufacturers spec, but whilst I've used them in the past they are too far away to take the i3 to them easily

Some have said wheel spacers can help the way the car drives, but equally they can throw out the suspension set up. I will probably try some. Might make the car feel more stable at speed but not necessarily fix the way it steers

Bit of a disappointment if I'm honest, was expecting a radical change rather than a hard-to-tell small change. The dealer Eastern BMW exceeded my expectations by some margin however

 

[pmak]

Thanks for report @Madelvic99!
Is there any chance that you upload a short video of how it selfcenters from full stop and when turning on semi-low speed? That would be a great reference for others as you technically speaking have almost a new car now

 

[TedStriker]

Car back after a week in the dealer and cost (under warranty) of £3k.

New track rod ends, new universal joint at the bottom of the steering column, new steering rack

The $64B question is is it fixed. Honestly not really. First reaction after a 30 minute drive home:

Steering feels much different with quarter of a turn of the wheel, much more obvious self centering and steering feels almost heavy. When I left the dealer it didn't feel like my car. However with minor movements of the wheel at anything over 30mph it feels much the same as before. That is with a tiny amount of lock on it still doesn't feel like it's self centering. Maybe a little better and time will tell but it differs from my other 4 cars (albeit each has a sporty bias) and I've not experienced anything like this I can recall

So what do I deduce from this? The steering can seize up somewhat (my car is 4 and a bit years old with 30k miles) and lube can help, HOWEVER I feel the dead dead-ahead feeling is a symptom of the way the car is engineered. I've learnt that adjusting the caster on the front is the way to improve self centering, but the i3 doesn't have adjustable caster. I do wonder if a highly specialised suspension company like Center Gravity could alter the steering affect, maybe taking suspension setup outside the manufacturers spec, but whilst I've used them in the past they are too far away to take the i3 to them easily

Some have said wheel spacers can help the way the car drives, but equally they can throw out the suspension set up. I will probably try some. Might make the car feel more stable at speed but not necessarily fix the way it steers

Bit of a disappointment if I'm honest, was expecting a radical change rather than a hard-to-tell small change. The dealer Eastern BMW exceeded my expectations by some margin however

Does it still keep turning if you turn the wheel then let go when driving on a straight road?

 

[g0rsq]

Car back after a week in the dealer and cost (under warranty) of £3k.

New track rod ends, new universal joint at the bottom of the steering column, new steering rack

The $64B question is is it fixed. Honestly not really. First reaction after a 30 minute drive home:

Bit of a disappointment if I'm honest, was expecting a radical change rather than a hard-to-tell small change. The dealer Eastern BMW exceeded my expectations by some margin however

Thanks for the feedback

Very disappointing to hear. Maybe this is just how the car is, which is terrible.

If I had known then I would not have got one, because the driving experience is terrible.

I am teaching my wife to drive, and she really is struggling to keep in the driving lane, something she does not experience with here driving instructors car. If I struggle I understand why she struggles!!!

I am going to keep investigating the issue. I do not think it is steering geometry, as the steering is still very stiff with both wheels up in the air, and almost impossible to move the steering by pushing/pulling the wheels, unlike all other cars I have owned. Yes I have owned cars with electric power steering, and these also have easy to move at the wheels steering.

This weekend I plan to disconnect the track rod ends and check it is not the top mounts, before making a tool to open the rack adjuster plug

If I can find an cheap old rack i may also get one to open up and investigate what is going on.

This CANNOT be the way the car is designed, it is so bad, verging on unsafe!

 

[Ninja]

Very disappointing to hear. Maybe this is just how the car is, which is terrible.
...
If I had known then I would not have got one, because the driving experience is terrible.
...
This CANNOT be the way the car is designed, it is so bad, verging on unsafe!

I have the same exact feelings described in this thread when I’m driving my 2014 i3 Rex.
It IS terrible handling, and should NOT be this way.
It's twitchy, stiction-y, does not center completely (or even close to it), wants to go wherever the last input or curve would go, but forever.
I could steer it about as well using pinball paddles instead of a steering wheel.

I was following this thread closely months ago and am just now catching up on the past several weeks.
Honestly I'm relieved to hear other people describe the same major issues when driving too.
Almost seems like I'm crazy somehow and can't quite put my finger on what is wrong, so it's reassuring to know it's not all in my imagination or something.

The steering rack seems like a very possible cause for these issues, but I have no personal experience working on steering racks to draw from.

I'll not-so-briefly recount my experience in a longer reply… just in case it's helpful to others jumping head-first into this rabbit hole too.

 

[Ninja]

my experience... in case it's helpful... into this rabbit hole

OK... here I go:
TLDR:
IDFK but hopefully somebody else figures it out and tells us how they fixed it

Drop Damage
Handling was never great, but this became un-live-wtih-able when I accidentally dropped the front of the car 4-6 inches off an undersized jack. This was immediately after completing a months long DIY AC rebuild in my garage
AC still works great 1.5 years and 15k miles later btw

Alignment
Days after the drop, I got an alignment at Firestone and paid the roughly $50 extra for lifetime alignment - which has always been worthwhile in the past, especially on aging cars where I slowly replace lots of suspension components over time.
Alignment helped maybe 40-60% with steering tracking better, but it still feels like there's only a tiny tiny window where straight ahead is actually straight.

It's almost like there's only one single wheel in the front center of the car, and any input slightly past center suddenly jerks the whole car around.
I've had a couple follow-up alignments at tire rotation time and they maybe helped a tiny bit, still doesn't feel right.

Steering Column
I also removed and re-greased the steering column U-Joint. feels like that helped a tiny bit, tho I could be imagining it if I'm honest.
Definitely the U-joint was dirty and a bit rusty in spots. I suspect my AC flush solvents that sprayed out of the evaporator, down the column, and onto the U-joint probably did not help the situation at all.
I cleaned up the rust with a wire brush and spray painted the freshly-bare metal areas with Rustoleum.

Also wiped down the U-joint bearings and added a very sticky bearing grease. It was visibly more free and definitely easier to move around by hand afterward.
After reassembly, was really not sure if it made any difference at all. If I had to guess I would say it was less than a 10% improvement.

Last, I lubricated the rubber slides on the steering column with silicone spray. I've read a BMW TSB about this, and tbh I think it's just to quiet a slight rubbing noise - I detected no difference after doing this.

Power Steering
It is not at all difficult to turn the steering wheel, and I can definitely feel the power steering assist working with me. Fine tuning the steering IS difficult, because it feels like any tiny input quickly causes the car to steer past where I want it to go.
I tried driving the front wheels onto 2 separate, flattened cardboard boxes in my garage and turning the wheel back and forth - super easy to do.
Almost as easy as when the front of the car is lifted in the air.

It IS very difficult to push the wheels around by hand with the car in the air and power steering active, which seems wrong to me. That kinda suggests steering rack issues or maybe tie rods somehow to me, but I'm not too familiar with troubleshooting that area.

Spacers
After much forum readings I added 20mm spacers to just the front wheels.
This seemed to help a lot with highway stability, which is great for my 30-miles-each-way highway commute, but doesn't solve the self-centering problem.
It is still very jerky because it kinda just goes wherever I last turned the wheel and needs constant tiny corrections to go in a straight-ish-direction.
Am planning to get spacers for the rear too, haven't committed to purchasing yet and kinda want to invest in other fixes first.

Struts + Top Mounts
I bought a used set of all 4 struts and springs from a 2017 i3 Rex with about 30k miles on them.
So far I've replaced both front struts & springs with those, while adding brand new top-mounts and gaiters.
This helped a bit with ride comfort/harshness and stability, but made no impact on self-centering as I had hoped.

I have not taken it in for an alignment since then, tho I had expected to drastically impact the alignment by replacing struts.
To my surprise, tracking feels pretty much exactly the same as before. There’s not really any adjustments or wrong-ways to reassemble that I can see, unless the top mount is misaligned with the coil spring.
Hopefully I'll get an alignment this weekend, but I have no expectation it will make a big improvement.

Windshield
Mostly unrelated, but I've had a small chip and a long crack added to the driver side of the windshield.
This helps by drawing my attention away from steering difficulties... but also exacerbates poor handling characteristics for the same reason.
I should’ve just gone for speed-holes instead, live and learn.

Ventilated seat cover
I added this last summer to make the BMW feel closer to the luxury that is my newer Hyundai hatchback.
Now when I'm sweating buckets like @TedStriker in Airplane, at least my back and bum are less damp and hot.

This is probably the best thing I've done for the handling problems of the car if I'm honest. Clenching everything while driving can be sweaty, sweaty work.


Parts Cannon
I'm tempted to replace tie rods, ball joints, sway bar bushings... anything else that's 10+ years old and just see what happens, but I don't have confidence that anything will make a meaningful impact.
Eventually I will finally get rid of the car, but it would be really great to solve this problem and enjoy it for a while first.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.