Happy 4th!

Well I took the day off on the 4th and enjoyed the day. On Saturday I went to the shop http://www.bmwmbenz.com and met up with Dimitri as he already started working on our newest "team" member Adam. His newly acquired e36 race car had a bad head gasket and a cracked head.So since I wanted to watch Dimitri install the freshly welded and machined head so I could learn. I did not get much done on my car. But I'm always ready to learn something new. So I did learn how to install a head gasket on a s50 and properly time the cams etc.....plus we got his car all squared away so he can go to the track next weekend.

So all I did was make the dreaded incisions into my old sheet metal to expose the rear sub-frame mount points. You guys that have done this on the e30 chassis will recognize this as the e30 uses the same chassis/suspension design in the rear. I looked at e30 DTM designs for the subframe mount/roll cage area for ideas.

The idea is simple. You want to channel the energy from the road that gets transfered from the wheels thru suspension arms to the sub-frame into the mounts (now solid) then into the thin(now rusting) chassis sheetmetal. By using a section of DOM tube welded to this area then you can run tubes from the main hoop and also to the rear portion of th cage. This will greatly increase the strength of this aging shell and will also make sure that the rear subframe/ trailing arms maintain their position. Also the stiffer springs (that will be installed) along with the now Solid sub-frame bushings do not cause the sheet metal to collapse or fail.

I decided to first mark it out with a sharpie I just used my judgment and started cutting!
Luckily as you see I made the cut perfectly right along the edge of the "sheet metal box" the mount sits in.

Here is side view of that area. The red lines depict the tubing, welds and the baseplate that will cover the area. This should integrate this vital suspension pickup point into the rollcage.
The rust is just surface rust after closer inspection..... but god know why BMW put that big hole that exposes the sheet metal to water....rust. Maybe there was a plastic plug there at some point.... after welding the tube I will POR-15 this area as it stop rust and is designed to paint right over the stuff and stop it.

Me making the cuts
Then I cut the right side one up as well.....and slid the tubing over it and it was a PERFECT fit! it's 1.75x0.120 wall DOM. Unfortunately......that's as far as I got.

Now I need to decide on how to tie this new pickup point to the rest of the cage.