E86 Front Triangulation Braces Retrofit

[discoelk]

Protolabs will do volume discounts also. I was going to investigate pricing as soon as I had a chance to open h CAD. I can report back in a day or two

[heinzboehmer]

Heinz, I didn't see the sheet metal brackets (that would be cut by SCS) for the strut towers in the files, am I blind or not understanding?

Ah my bad! Missed uploading those. Fixed.

I'll paste in a link to a premade sendcutsend cart once that's ready.

Re: the firewall/billet mounts, SCS is offering CNC services and they are not terribly far off Heinz price and adding multiple quantities brings the price down.

I reached out to my CNC shop that makes our parts and asked them for a quote. They want to modify the windshield mount (I'm assuming to make fixturing easier, but waiting for a reply) and so both of these items at qty 1x are far and above what Heinz paid or quoted by SCS.

BUT if we increased the qty to 5x then my shop comes out ahead. My cost would be $500.11 (with tax) per set for (5) sets ordered. I Imagine we'd be able to get the SCS sheet metal parts cheaper by increasing the qty too.

I think this is in the spirit of what Heinz wanted, there is no money to be made by me, so if he approves and there are enough of us interested but are held back by the price we could look at something like a Group Buy for the parts.

That's $500 for both parts? If so, that's an awesome deal.

By all means go ahead with the group buy if there's interest. The whole point of sharing this is that it gets adopted by as many people as possible!

I'd be interested in knowing how your CNC shop wants to modify the windshield mount.

[George Hill]

Sendcutsend recently added CNC to their list. Might be worth pricing them out.

... SCS is offering CNC services and they are not terribly far off Heinz price and adding multiple quantities brings the price down.

[Obioban]

Sendcutsend recently added CNC to their list. Might be worth pricing them out.

[George Hill]

Heinz, I didn't see the sheet metal brackets (that would be cut by SCS) for the strut towers in the files, am I blind or not understanding?

Re: the firewall/billet mounts, SCS is offering CNC services and they are not terribly far off Heinz price and adding multiple quantities brings the price down.

I reached out to my CNC shop that makes our parts and asked them for a quote. They want to modify the windshield mount (I'm assuming to make fixturing easier, but waiting for a reply) and so both of these items at qty 1x are far and above what Heinz paid or quoted by SCS.

BUT if we increased the qty to 5x then my shop comes out ahead. My cost would be $500.11 (with tax) per set for (5) sets ordered. I Imagine we'd be able to get the SCS sheet metal parts cheaper by increasing the qty too.

I think this is in the spirit of what Heinz wanted, there is no money to be made by me, so if he approves and there are enough of us interested but are held back by the price we could look at something like a Group Buy for the parts.

[heinzboehmer]

Very cool! Any chance you'll offer this as a kit w/ core exchange on the strut tower plates?

Unfortunately, no. I just do not have the time to be putting these kits together. This is part of the reason why I decided to share everything

The amount of engineers that own these cars are part of the reason why I still like having both of mine.

I don't like them without the nerds behind keeping them on the road since BMW stopped caring about classics a while ago.

Thank you Heinz.

Hell yeah, happy to contribute to the community. These cars are too good to ignore!

Got excited then saw the price. I’ll add this to the long term to-do list.

I’m gonna remove the cabin filter housing to see how much of a difference its removal makes on induction noise. If it’s significant then I’ll be grabbing a carbon housing soon lol.

You should remove both the filter housing and the firewall plug for max intake noise. It's surprising how much more comes in.

And yes, this is not a cheap mod. There's a good amount of custom parts to make, but the end result is so worth it.

You can likely take off a good chunk off of the cost with some modifications to the fabrication. Cheaper welding labor (or free if you trust yourself), cheaper fasteners and a different approach to the windshield mount can knock $500+ off the price. Maybe you can convince bigjae46 to sell you his forged carbon version of the mount.

Ideally, this mount would be a spot welded (or epoxy/riveted) sheet metal bracket, like the one on the E86/E9x/E8x/etc. Unfortunately, I still do not know the typical loads that this piece sees, so I had to design it to be stronger than the weakest link in the chain: the E86 braces themselves. There's a lot of potential for price optimization here, I just decided that spending more money to get this CNC machined was worth it, as I did not want to be stuck with a failed part that is permanently bonded to my chassis.

If anyone wants to add some strain gauges to a set of E86 braces, I can throw them on my car and capture a bunch of typical load data. Then from that, an optimized sheet metal design can be designed.

[SQ13]

Got excited then saw the price. I’ll add this to the long term to-do list.

I’m gonna remove the cabin filter housing to see how much of a difference its removal makes on induction noise. If it’s significant then I’ll be grabbing a carbon housing soon lol.

[Sharocks]

The amount of engineers that own these cars are part of the reason why I still like having both of mine.

I don't like them without the nerds behind keeping them on the road since BMW stopped caring about classics a while ago.

Thank you Heinz.

[Bimmer man]

Very cool! Any chance you'll offer this as a kit w/ core exchange on the strut tower plates?

[heinzboehmer]

Awesome write up, I didn't read the doc but I'm curious how much time this project would take now, having all the info and testing done etc...

Hmm, if I were to do this again, I think I could get it all done in a weekend (excluding welding and printing time). One day for prepping the parts (machining, test fitting, assembling, bonding, etc.) and another for installing the windshield mount.

Swapping the strut tower brackets and the HVAC plastics takes 5 min.

Amazing project! Love that you've open sourced it. I might've missed it in the write up, but would 6061 be enough for the metal bits or what material would you recommend?

Edit: Nvm. I did miss it, lol.

Yep! Should be fine, just make sure it's 6061-T6, since that's what the analysis was run with.

[dHam_Slow.46M]

Amazing project! Love that you've open sourced it. I might've missed it in the write up, but would 6061 be enough for the metal bits or what material would you recommend?

Edit: Nvm. I did miss it, lol.

1. NOTE: This part is designed to be CNC machined out billet aluminum. FEA was run with 6061-T6, so it needs to be made out of something that is at least as strong as that material. I got mine machined out of 7075-T6 because the increase in cost was worth the extra peace of mind for me.

[Nate047]

Awesome write up, I didn't read the doc but I'm curious how much time this project would take now, having all the info and testing done etc...

[siamkazi]

This is the COOLEST thing i've seen in a long time, i don't want this...i NEED this

[fattycharged]

You guys always impress. Very very cool


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[WestBankM4]

Super, super cool! Been following and I will definitely be doing this in the future. Unless I spring for the Slon part, pockets be damned I'll be going this route. Amazing man, truly Heinze.