subframe tube done!

Welded the plates in and completed the subframe connector tubes....incredibly I have never seen another '02 with this done to it. I've seen people weld tubes to the area but never actually do it like all the e30 and e36 guys do.

My "comrade" Dimitri, none of this would of been possible without his chain smokin' helping hand.
We are using a Harbor Freight tube notcher in case you where wondering.

Next we tacked in the subframe downbars.

DOM Time!!

Next we started working on the main "X" on the down bars. In case you were wondering DOM tubing is 1.5"x0.095 thick. This is in line with the rule book for a 2000lbs car.

I'm using his welder and Im still trying to figure it out but Im getting decent results.....
Me sparking it up!
It's getting tighter and tighter back there everyday .... more tubes to come !
Here is the completed section........ next the "X" to connect the subframe to the cage.

Subframe connector welded in...

I decided if I was going to ever finish this I would have to start working on it during the week, so I started to go to the shop after work these last 2 days.

Good thing too as we are making great progress....

welded in the subframe posts,

Welded the tube section to side of the "box" as well for additional support.

also did some additional "seam welding" where ever the mig gun would let me.
last step before I weld the cover/base plate is to drench/cover the entire area with POR-15

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.

Vintage Racer Killed In High-Speed Crash At Mosport Raceway

This weekend weekend of bad motorsports keeps getting worse. Yesterday, Scott Kalitta. Today, Dino Crescentini, a ten-year veteran of vintage racing, died at Mosport International Raceway in Bowmanville, Ontario, when the Wolf Dallara Can-Am car he was driving — a car once owned by Canadian industrialist and Formula One team owner Walter Wolf and driven in the 1977 Can-Am Series by the legendary Canadian Gilles Villeneuve — apparently went sideways at very high speed. Crescentini was participating in a race as part of the 29th International Vintage Racing Festival at the track. Inspector Paul Hamilton of the Durham Regional Police tells us

"...[the driver] was heading northbound from corner six at Mosport. After this corner is a long straightaway and at some point his vehicle became airborne at an extremely high rate of speed and rolled end-over-end. The driver was transported to Bowmanville hospital where he succumbed to his injuries."

Crescentini had been involved in vintage racing for more than 10 years.

Crescentini was an all-round sportsman. He was a member of the San Marino (Italy) bobsled team that competed at the 1994 Lillehammer Olympics.

My thought go out to him and his family, looks like he led a full life and left us flat out in his racecar. RIP and if you see Senna up there say hi to him for me.....

Cage work finnaly begun!

Spent all day on Saturday working on my friends Dimitri's E36 race car assembling his new rear suspension setup. It was SOOO FREAKIN hot!!! Must of been like 110 at least! We got thru the day drinking lots of water and sweating about twice that and finished his car.

Started sunday by watching F1 with My mom and my stepdad. GO MASSA!! Go Senna!

Then it was back to working the the OVEN they call the valley. Today we towed my car to the shop with Dimitri's X5. Which we like to call the ultimate tow vehicle! I wish it was mine.... the pair looks so good, don't they?

I decided to start work on the cage from back to front. That is to say I will start in the trunk and slowly work my way to the engine bay.

First order of business was to remove the awkward bar spanning across the 2 down tubes. I cut it out with the mighty sawzall then ground down the nub and painted it.

After grinding.....
after all painted up!
Next I used the same tube I just cut out to serve as my strut tube. You might ask me why no baseplate? Well I considered it, but as you might be able to see in the pictures the metal on that strut tower is VERY thick around 1/8". So I decided the best thing would be just to weld the tube directly on the strut tower. I will not be using coilovers so there really is not much load in this area. As my "downbar X" will be welded to my strut tube In case of a roll over the load will be shared by both mounting points. I did not design or install the original cage (ireland Eng. did) or else this whole area would of been very different. I'm just "modifing and adding" to the existing cage so keep that in mind.

Now after I welding in the "strut tower tube" I added the "diff tubes".

Quick flex test of this area I did today- I jacked the car up from the diff mount and I could actually see the floor board moving up or "bowing" from the center maybe 1-2mm at least. I was surprised by the amount of flex I observed! Now all the suspension forces that come thru the rear wheels make there way into the chassis thru the suspension arm into the subframe and into the car thru the subframe mounts. The other load path is thru the spring pads. The third and last location is the diff mount and the suspension loads and diff power "torquing" that might occur all transfer into this area.

TO address this I have seen this done many different ways. The diff mounts in 2 points on what basically is a square tube that spans in-between the strut towers along the floor. So the best solution would be to cut the tubing open (ala e36 subframe tie-ins) weld a plate then a tube sticking out. Then plate cloe the hole and weld you connecting tubes to it..... that's a bit too involved that I'm willing to go right now.

Another way I have seen is to tubes meeting in the middle of the trunk.....this seemed silly as the diff mounts in 2 spots and not is the center.

this pic from another 2002 race car build shows the diff mount and the tubing well.
I decided to go with 2 tubes mounting to the area directly above the mounts. Pretty much like the pic above. Now I understand I'm not actually connecting the tubes directly to the diff mounts but the large plate and the 2 tubes will greatly increase the stiffness of the area and now any loads will be transfered up into the cage instead of bending the floor.....

There are 10,000 to cook potatoes...this is just how I cooked mine.
Also this leaves a nice space in the middle to mount the battery!
here you can see the diff mounting bolts in relation to the tubes. I used 1.5"x.120 wall DOM for the strut tube and 1 1/4"x.120 wall DOM for the diff tubes.
....and that's as far as we got in today slighty cooler 100+ degree heatwave......

Why do I wait till the summer to start working on things like these?

Rollin' again & out with all the old wires...

Not much work done this weekend in-between me taking break all the time to watch the LeMans race.....I still can't get over how beautiful those Peugeot's are....


Put the car on it's wheels and rolled it out of the garage for the first time in over a year...wow time flies.

Got the car ready to take to over to the official bmw1602.com shop.....

http://www.bmwmbenz.com/

It a great little independent BMW & Mercedes repair shop where my good friend Dimitri works. Luckily the owner likes me and has allowed us to work on our race cars after hours and on weekends when the shop is closed. This is invaluable as it gives me access to lifts, factory tools, etc..... So I'm now thankfully listing them as one of my sponsors.

So next week the car goes over there so I can start work on the cage (he has a shear and a drill press with a notcher etc... I will probably tack weld the cage together over there then take it back to my garage for final welding.

Meanwhile I happily removed ALL of the pre-historic wiring from the car. Thankfully since the car is ancient there is not much to get rid of. I will be rewiring everything to a new fresh switch panel with circuit breakers and switches.

Oh yeah.....after a quick week of unemployment I now have a new job.....(unfortunately no increase in pay)

pre-historic wiring
OUT WITH THE OLD.......maybe a good 5lbs. too! .....