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tinkwithanr

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Everything posted by tinkwithanr

  1. Custom Center Hats, the rear will either be made of steel entirely or have a steel ring that bolts in for the shoes to engage.
  2. And then he said, "Let there be brakes!" And it was good. Front: 6-Piston Forged Calipers 300mm (11.75") x 32mm (1.25") vented 2-piece rotors Rear: 4-Piston Forged Calipers 300mm (11.75") x 32mm (1.25") vented 2-piece rotors Retains Stock Hand Brake The front and rear will share the same rotor disc, so maintenance/replacement will be easy. The brake bias is kept at the proper ratio due to the difference in the piston area for the 6-pot front and 4-pot rear calipers. It can then be fine tuned with the balance bar pedal setup and by changing out the master cylinders if need be.
  3. Thanks for the support guys. Sadly my ebay addiction continues. This is only part of the newer direction: More to come.
  4. Hey guys, it's been a while. I wish I had a lot of great progress to show from the past few months, but truth be told I haven't really touched the car since December. Without getting into to much detail, I had some pretty big changes to my life that made me reconsider a lot of things, including whether or not I wanted to continue with this project. The good news is that I'm doing much better now, and have decided that I want to continue working on her. I've also spent the last couple of weeks rethinking some aspects of the project, and let's just say things are just getting started. I've decided to change or modify a number of aspects of the car, including bodywork and engine. There is one thing in particular that I'm very excited about the possibilities of. I'm not going to go into any details right now because it's still very early in the design process, but when it's all said and done it should be pretty monumental for not just my personal car but the entire BMW community. And I promise I'll try and have some progress to report in the next week or so!
  5. They are handy. You can also get them from HF and Eastwood.
  6. Interested in the rocker trim. Could you shoot me a picture or two to jonathanWtinker at gmail dot com Thanks
  7. I'm in for a kit for a '72, my dad just got one and this will make a great stocking stuffer. Please let me know your payment info. Thanks, Jonathan
  8. Maybe. It depends on how the wheels and tires fit under the flares to begin with. I don't want to run a crazy amount of camber, and the camber plates should give me what I'm looking for. At the same time the extra track width would give me more clearance for the pedal assembly on the driver side.
  9. Thanks Tom! Got a lot of prototyping done today. First up was to get the strut tubes bead blasted and welded back together: Here you can see how much shorter they will be compared to a set of stock '02 struts. It turned out to be ~1.75": Hmmm, what could these be for... With the housing welded back together I cut a 1" hold in the bottom of them: Then I went over to the other side of the building to use the large horizontal band saw. First I cut the welding spacer into two pieces 3.15" long (with some left over): Then I also cut out some 4"x4" billet alum 1.25" long, which will be used for the roll center spacers that go on the bottom of the strut housing: Everything all cut out and ready to go: Here's the two strut tube spacers along with the CAD dwg I made up. Took some notes and got one spacer turned out. Finished Piece: Then I took some 1/2" stainless bar stock and made this guy: He fits into the receiver on the bottom of the strut insert for adjusting the compression damping like so: All the parts for the strut insert spacer laid out: And assembled outside the strut tube: And how it looks with everything installed in the strut housing: This is how the roll center spacer will hold the second gear. Because the steering arms and outer ball joints for the front suspension mount directly underneath the strut housing, access to the compression damping adjustment screw is blocked. The gear assembly will let it be adjusted from the side of the roll center spacer, full external adjustment. Moving on, I used the fly mill to square up the 4" chunks of aluminum to ensure the top and bottom are parallel and even to each other: Then I machined a bunch of holes in it. Parts for the roll center spacer laid out: Assembled: Then I added one M3x0.5 set screw for each of the bearings in the assembly: And this is everything in place: And how it will be covered with the steering arm installed: Overall I'm very happy with how the assembly turned out. The weak link right now is definitely the plastic gears. I started with them mostly because of cost, they were $3 each while the equivalent steel gear is $20 per. I wanted to make sure the theory and practicality of the setup would work before spending the extra $80 on gears. Keeping that in mind I designed it around a gear size (d.p. and basic dimensions) that is available in both plastic and steel. The other reason why I wanted to try out the plastic gears first was corrosion resistance. Even though the assembly will be pretty much sealed from the elements, I'm sure water and grit will find it's way in there somehow. The mild steel gears may start to rust, so I'll need to pack the assembly with grease before putting the steering arm on to help prevent the gears from rusting together. All that's left is the drill the mounting holes for the roll center spacer to the housing, and the steering arms to the roll center spacer. Then I just have to rinse and repeat for the other side. Thanks for looking!
  10. Thanks, that's the math I hadn't bothered to work out yet. Of course it all depends on if the new aftermarket sender is 0-90 full to empty or 90-0 full to empty. If it's the opposite of the stock setup it may also need a voltage divider to reverse the signal's slope.
  11. Wrote up a nice update and it deleted itself right before I posted it, so I'm just gonna throw a bunch of pictures up and maybe explain it later lol. New storage for the socket sets. I laid them out how I wanted and drew it up in CAD. Then used that to engrave some signs and underlaid that with plywood: Fits in the drawers of my craftsman box: Then I worked on the front struts. Removed the spring perches and cut them in half. Then I turned down what was left of the perches on the lathe and trued up the cut edge. Could use the lathe on the bottom half of the strut housings because the spindle didn't clear the ways, so I trued those ends by hand. Then I made an aluminum spacer that will keep the halves in line when I go to reweld them. With the welding done the spacer will then be cut down and used to space up the Koni inserts from the bottom of the strut tube (they are shorter than the housings, so they need to be spaced up for the gland nuts to have something to hold on to). Happy Holidays!
  12. I got mine from Summit, their retail store is local to me.
  13. Bending the sender to read 75 ohm as opposed to 90 would be very simple assuming you have a digital multimeter. Just bend the arm on the sender down so that it hits the bottom of the tank sooner, and double check the new resistance in the empty position. As far as the two posted fuel cells, they are basically identical. Both should work fine, though the internal foam will deteriorate over time and clog the fuel filter etc. Thats why I went with a fuel cell with internal metal baffles and no foam.
  14. The stock sender is actually 3-75 ohm, but the 3 ohm can be replicated with an in-line resistor pretty easily. As for the top end, if you just hooked it up as is the gauge would read empty when the tank was still 1/6th full. If that doesn't bother you to much you could just hook up the 3 ohm resistor and call it a day. If you want it to be more accurate, then a bit more work is needed. I'm going to be running a 20 gallon fuel cell, so I'm planning to make a 'black box' to be hooked up to the system in line between the sender and the gauge that will successfully convert the 0-90 ohm signal to 3-75 ohm. I just haven't sat down and worked out the specific values yet. My thought process for doing so is as follows, if anyone has any input please feel free speak up. The circuit for the fuel gauge consists of: 1) Voltage Source (I'm assuming +12V, haven't double checked yet) 2) Fuel Level Sending Unit - varying internal resistance of 3-75 ohm 3) Fuel Level Gauge Basically the system functions by letting the internal resistance of the sending unit control (limit) the amount of current (amps) that gets fed into the gauge. The lower the resistance of the sending unit, the more amps can flow through the circuit, and the fuller the gauge reads. In order to match the new 0-90 ohm sending unit to the stock fuel gauge, it needs to limit the current the same amount as the stock 3-75 ohm unit. As mentioned above the low end can be limited by a simple 3 ohm resister wired in series. However it gets trickier when converting the 'empty' range of the unit. The new sending unit will limit the current to much at the low end of the range (90 ohms lets less current through than 75 ohms), so more current needs to be put back into the system in a controlled manner. This means the 'black box' will also need a +12v input separate from the original gauge circuit. The new 12V input will be limited in a manner that raises the total amperage output of the circuit by ~16.6%, matching the original output from the gauge. Another possible option would be to by a fuel cell that is close to the depth of the stock gas tank and adapt the stock sender unit to bolt into the new tank. More fab, less electrical. I don't know the length of the stock sending unit off the top of my head, but it seems like it would work just fine.
  15. Here's the rest of what I picked up over the weekend. New assortment of sockets. I've been using my old craftsman "121" piece set for the past 4 years, and finally decided it was time to upgrade. The main difference is a greater range of socket sizes for each drive size, as well as a whole lot more deep well sockets. The old set only had 1/4 and 3/8 drive DW, and only 10 total. This set has pretty much everything from 4-22mm in DW, 12 and 6 point. It also came with standard and metric ratcheting wrenches. Half off as well! Next up I got the inserts for the front suspension. Koni 8611-1259 double adjustable's. I'm still working on getting the compression adjustment mods figured out on the strut itself, but it should do the job nicely. It also leaves plenty of room in the strut housing to shorten it. Then I sorted out the rear suspension. I decided to go with QA1 Double Adjustable shocks with Eibach Springs. These have urethane bushings in each end, but if that ends up deflecting to much I can change them out for spherical bits easily. They are also very easy to adjust, just reach under the car and turn the knobs. Then I got all my AN fittings and hose for the fuel system and oil system, as well as the necessary wrenches to put them together. I still need to get the hard lines for the long runs under the car, but I should be able to get the engine bay lines run. More fuel system goodies including a billet fuel rail, fuel filter and adjustable regulator: Last but not least the new set of wheels came in. I already split them before I remembered to grab a couple of pictures, but they are Epsilon Meshes. Once I rebuild them to the right specs they should be 16x8 front and 16x9 rear with gold centers and polished lips. Kinda like a poor mans BBS E50. Centers: Lips: For those that haven't seen them in good condition this is what they will look like when done: Happy Holidays!
  16. Had a busy Black Friday. Here's a small teaser of the payload. Ti Lug Studs and Nuts. Cause nobody likes rusty nuts.
  17. Hey, Shoot me an email through my profile with the new price of studs/nuts. Thanks, Jonathan
  18. Nope. At least I'm not sure yet. I have a couple of paint schemes I choosing between. But once I get the main car done I'll paint the HW car to match, whatever that ends up being.
  19. Next up was to adapt my throttle cable to the pedal assembly. The throttle cable in question is a Lokar Stainless Steel bit. It's 4ft long, but can also be cut to length, so I just bought one that I knew would be a bit to long. Here is the stock end of the throttle cable. Unfortunately the opening in the cable adapter is 3/16", and the pedal linkage is 1/4" wide. Also, the 'throat' of the adapter is very shallow, and so even if I widened it, it wouldn't allow the linkage to move through it's entire range of motion without binding. And here is the end of the cable. It's got a crimped on bulb, so I can just slip off the old fitting and replace it with one that will work with the Tilton linkage. So I started with a 0.75" rod of 304 stainless: And 1 hour later ended up with this: It's 1.5" long and turned down to 9/16 diameter. Then I machined 1/8" hole all the way through, followed by tapping it 1/4-28 thread 1" deep ending in a 3/16" diameter chamfer to match up with the bulb of the cable. It also has two flat spots milled onto it so it can be held with a 7/16" wrench. Threaded end: To install it first slide the cable through the end and sit the bulb at the bottom of the threaded section: Then screw the heim joint into the threaded end and tighten the jam nut. Lastly install the assembly onto the Tilton linkage. With this end of the cable sorted out I just need to mount the outer shielding on the firewall and figure out the throttle body end of the cable.
  20. So as I alluded to earlier, I decided to deleted the stock pedal assembly and replace it with a Tilton floor mount assembly. There were a number of reasons I decided to do this. First, the itb setup meant that the stock brake booster wouldn't fit anymore. Likewise, with the G260 trans in place, the stock throttle linkage would be very close to the outer bell housing. By switching to the Tilton setup I am able to avoid those issues. The pedals in question are are Tilton 72-603, which is a three pedal assembly. The brake pedal uses a balance bar, which lets you adjust the bias front to rear from the driver seat (with the optional cable adjuster). It also keeps the front and rear brakes on separate master cylinders, so if one of the circuits ended up getting damaged I will still have brakes to help bring the car to a stop. If you look at the above picture, you'll notice that the pedal pads are also adjustable. There are 4 vertical positions and three horizontal, for a total of 12 per pedal. I am also thinking of machining a new gas pedal pad to help with heel-toe driving. I'll wait until I can try it out before going down that road though. In the next picture you can see the throttle linkage assembly. The linkage, like the rest of the pedal assembly, is completely adjustable. This will allow me to dial in the throttle plate position relative to the gas pedal, avoiding a laggy or on-off feeling. Of course the new pedal assembly isn't without it's issues. Mainly the fact that the driver side frame rail goes right through the same area, so it needs to be cut out and rerouted. Also the clutch master cylinder is much further off to the right than the old setup, so much so that it sticks into the driver side footwell. If it end up interfering with the steering at full lock I'll need to make up a simple linkage that moves the clutch master cylinder up and over, away from the wheel/tire. I'll wait to make that decision until the front suspension is back in though. Here is the pedal assembly bolted in place: Here you can see clutch cylinder, it sticks into the wheel well an inch or so. And here you can see how much of the frame rail/firewall needed to be trimmed out. The frame rail will be remade with 1/8" or 3/16" steel boxed and welded flush much like the motor mounts, but out of the way of the brake and clutch cylinders. I also picked up a new tool to help strip the old tar and POR-15 off the floor boards so I can make sure they are clean and rust free. And the progress after ~15 seconds of grinding: Then I got the steering column support bearing tacked in place. Ironically it fit in the stock location of the old column mount, it just needed to be angle downward slightly. Then I took a break from work and took a few pictures with my other '02. Once I get Fiona finished I want to paint this one as a 'mini-me' and it in her glovebox or center console area lol. Thanks for looking!
  21. I'll trade you, details on making my pedals work for your front driver side flare. Your move.
  22. Quick Teaser: This mod is not for the faint of heart.
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