Hot sunday in the valley....

My moms garage is in the valley and boy was it a sauna in there.....! I managed to get alot done and only sweat out a few buckets!

I finish grinding off all the 5 layers of paint in the engine bay and frame rails. Luckily no serious rust to report....

So now I'm ready to start on the cage work....
you might notice I cut out the passenger firewall "foot bulge". This is to make it easier to install and removal the headers....might seam silly but why not! I like making my life easier...

Also finally finished welding on the subframe adjusters. Then I used the air grinder to finish cutting out the adjustment slots. The "eccentrics" required some grinding filing to ensure proper smooth operation....basically it all took some fine tunning to get just right.....

Not bad eh? I'm pretty proud of myself.

Completed subframe
Outermost pickup point adjust toe and inside (vertical slots) adjusts camber.

Completed modified rear suspension!

Reinforced trailing arms and now adjustable subframe ! (also solid subframe mount bushing not pictured)

Truck? I don't need no stinking truck!

Mother's day weekend started by going to pickup some 1.5" x .095 DOM tubing for the roll cage modifications.

the workers at the metal yard looked at me funny when I pointed to my lowered M3 and said "put it on the roof!"

They were like are you sure? It's 60 odd pounds of tubing that 20ft. long!

I told'em....."It's okay this is how we do it in Brazil all the time!" they all had a laugh...
I didn't break any speed limits but I got home just fine....

According to my receipt I got 2 pieces 18'.3" long. = $35.59 each ! I believe that is a smoking deal!

The M3 makes a great hauler......

Alot of time was spent talking and discussing about the engine bay cage design......

In my previous post you saw my version 1.0........I'm calling this V.2.0

Soon into discussion we realized we needed to have the engine in place with the head and most importantly the DISTRIBUTOR......


Within 15 mins we had it all together.....here is version 2.0
The Engine bay tubes will be 1"-1/4" x .120 wall
This design clears the distributor, the carburator etc.... The green things are "taco" gussets with dimple dies.....
after pretty much setteling with this design....I continued my work with the subframe adjusters..... Make sure everything is clean and secure before welding
Measure with calipers to insure that both plates are in exactly the same place. BEFORE welding

Then the fun part..... weld away!

Bimmerfest recovery....back to work!

I was working the Stealthauto booth at Bimmerfest this weekend and unfortunately did not get a good chance to look around.

I did stop by the Ireland Engineering booth and picked up some camber and toe rear adjustable weld on kit.

SO back home on Sunday I got back to work on the car abit....

Here is the Camber kit

First I clamped a piece of flat stock to serve as a backer so I may take my big F'ing hammer and make the small turned out lips flat.
Marking where to cut so that with the plate on now we have a slot so the eccentric adjuster may move back and forth....
On the Semi-trailing arm design of the 2002 (also e30 and Mcoupe). The more you lower the car or basically move th arm further up into it's travel, you gain toe-in and the tire gains negative camber. So usually a 2002 at race ride height will have too much camber and too much toe-in. This kit will allow you to dial some of that out.

Also if you ever plan on running bias ply slicks, you will want close to 0 camber so these become even more important.

Toe will move back and forth on the outermost trailing arm mount on a horizontal plane. This will give you the ability to adjust toe.

The innermost trailing arm mount (closest to the diff) will be cut so we may move the arm on a vertical plane. As we move the eccentric down we get more negative camber and more we move it up we reduce the amount of negative camber.
My first TIG weld on the adjustment plates