Progress on the bmw1602.com car ...** UPDATED 05/05/20 *

[bmw1602.com]

My car/mom's house is 5 mins from IMS...... IMS is SUPER EXPENSIVE!!!!

I never buy anything from there unless I have to!

2 mins down the road there is a metal yard called queen city steel. Thier prices on EVERYTHING is easily almost 50% cheaper than IMS.

I almost fell over when the guy at IMS told me how much they wanted for DOM. Instead I drove a few blocks away and bought the same DOM for alot less....

According to my receipt I got 2 pieces 18'.3" long 1.5"x.095. = $35.59 each ! I believe that is a smoking deal!

Here is the address for the metal yard.

Queen city steel

2801 N San Fernando Blvd

Burbank, CA 91504

(818) 846-3446‎

and I have some trailing arms ready to go.....and a subframe ...still FS... I have some control arms made up for sale soon too....

http://forums.bimmerforums.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1008849&highlight=trailing+arms

[bmw1602.com]

What do you think my car is powered by?

A hungry poor brazilian !! yes that's me in the engine bay...This is what happens when you drink beer and work on your car.

But seriously, I was in there to check the hood clearance on our new new "strut tower" design. If you look back at my ver.1 and ver2. ......something just didn't work for me. Thanks to Dimitri I think we finalized on a "strut tower" tube design. I feel much better now !

First step was to check the hood clearance........I'll shave my hood reinforcement support bar that I fiber glassed in just enough to make room for the tube.

Next I broke out the cardboard and started laying out the strut plate and transferred it to steel, using 1/8" plate. It was a total bitch to cut it out while maintaining straight lines etc.... even more challenging to cut out the center opening.

Next the moment we've all been waiting for......drum roll please

First hole in the firewall.....!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Getting the hole cut and lined up in just the right spot? ....priceless!

TUBING is 1-1/4 x .120 wall

It's all downhill from here!

let's see how our idea all comes together

[bmw1602.com]

here are the top plates.....

[bmw1602.com]

penetrating the firewall with laser precision!

[bmw1602.com]

quick update.....

welded in the dash bar, in preparation for the strut tubes...so they have a place to join to..

[peteinjp]

Seeing this thread makes me want to build a cage- very cool! One welding question- it looks like you are doing overlapping spots as opposed to a long single bead- why? I 'm guessing heat build up but not sure.

Excellent work!

Pete

[bmw1602.com]

yes I am using that technique, but only because I'm using a 220v mig welder, I have it turned up really high actually, I did do some tests on a slice of tubing and a plate and the penetration looks good. I can actually see the puddle melting both tubes while welding. It's looks very different than the weld pool when I'm use my 120v miller. During my initial tests with my 120v 20amp Miller to see if I could get away using it since I was using .95 wall tubing. I could tell right away I just didn't have enough heat in both metals to get full penetration using this puddle technique. Which is why I towed my car to my friends shop to use his 220v Hobart. So of the welder has enough power this is a good technique that will give you strong welds and a "tig" like stack of dimes look.

I wanted the extra current/power to ensure there was enough power to properly melt both tubes together even where I might use .120wall tubing. After doing all this welding this last week and looking at these pools real closely. I'm pretty sure that I'm getting proper fusion.

Hopefully I never have an opportunity to find out...

[bmw1602.com]

Front Completed!

Well after much thought about my previous ideas for the front shock tower tie-in....We came up with another Idea. Problem was when we start actually looking at all the different sheet metal structures that make up the "shock tower" on the 2002. After many ideas we decided that with this design we leave the stock structure of the strut tower unchanged. Basically I will use the new tubes and gussets to integrate them into the stock structure and the resulting design should increase the overall stiffness and strength of the front of the car.

Basic idea was to lay a thick 1/8" plate over the top of the mounting area. The run horizontal tubes from the dash bar (like many e36 and e46 designs) and then run one tube from my existing lower "dash bar" to give it some horizontal support.

vertical support tube mount to the lower dash bar...

here is a good side view of the completed design.

the gap on some of this tube is not as bad as it looks it just the way the tube is laying there as none of this is tak welded in yet....

Maybe not as pretty or elegant as I might of imagined but we managed to come up with a unique effective design.

[alp]

I can't remember the reason why you weren't using a tig welder (didn't have access to one)? How much more do you have to do? Would it of been any easier to just build a tube framed car?

[bmw1602.com]

Granted I'm vintage racing and the racing is not at the same agressive level of what I encountered on the "Setup" tv show or even your local NASA or scca race. But the single door bar always made me uneasy and was never a permanent solution.

I decided to maintain the main tube already welded in and transform the existing tube into a door X design. This should once again help with chassis stiffness and more importantly safety.

I will be adding dimpled "taco" gussets to the X as well as many other parts of the cage.

Now for the driver side I decided to run and additional tube connecting the center of the x to the door sill tube. This should help in a side impact. Also as I said I will be adding many gussets...

So now I'll feel a bit more safe in that seat....

[bmw1602.com]

I can't remember the reason why you weren't using a tig welder (didn't have access to one)? How much more do you have to do? Would it of been any easier to just build a tube framed car?

Tig is slow....so speed was one reason for MIG.....and TIG is very tricky to weld in some positions especially since I don't have a torch control and a stubby torch for my tig.

That said I will be TIg'in some of the tubes on the front and maybe the door bars since I easier access to them and they will be very visible so I want to make them pretty.

Tube frame car? yeah maybe...... this is a slow ever evolving project that has morphed as it was built so..... That said it's not that much different from cages in most of the race cars you see on FIA GT or most production racing series. It's really a basic roll cage you might see in a e36 or e46 or even e30 Touring race car. It's just usually people don't go this far on a 2002.

I have the time/skill/tools....hey it cost me like $80 in tubing so why not.

Besides from this chassis I have now, to a tube frame car like the ones I posted above is a huge leap in expense and work..... this is far from a tube frame racer!

[bmw1602.com]

After seeing some this on some other e36 build threads I'm really surprised I didn't think of this before!

Basically just a tube that's connected to the cage so you can jack the car up from one centralized point and get both wheels in the air at the same time. Which is great for enduro pit stops ala Nascar style or just convenient so I can place both jack stands at the same time.

I would of liked to have placed it a bit closer to the middle of the rocker but there was some things in the way (maybe side exit exhuast). The bigger issue was also the sill tube bends out and the jack tube would not of lined up. In the end my location works perfect.

Would of been sweet to have air jacks but.......yeah right!

Was simple cut the hole with the hole saw - then slide the tube to mar the trim point - then cut a notch.......done.

tested it with the jack........

Nothing like some cold beer to celebrate the end of cage fabrication !!!!

[bmw1602.com]

Bottoms up! ......yeah it was freakin' hot in the valley.....it's always hot there.....Thank for the beer Dimitri!

hey Pacifico! how about some sponsorship?

[bmw1602.com]

Full pics as always on my site...

So it only took all weekend to weld all the tubes in! Granted I only managed to get started after lunch everyday but it was alot of work!

I'm very happy with the finished product! Even tough in my crazed mind I kinda have an itch to add a few more tubes.......hehe.....

somebody stop me!

....next step is adding all the dimpled gussets......

here is this weekends work.....highlights.....

[bmw1602.com]

ready for those 500lbs spring I think.....hehe