heinzboehmer's 2002 Topaz 6MT Coupe

[heinzboehmer]

New hood seals! Luxurious.

Right? I felt so fancy putting them on.

Speaking of fancy, my street tires have been heat cycled out for a bit now, but I was holding out to see if Michelin would finally release the PS5SSS5Super in 18", so I hadn't gotten new ones. But then I noticed this:



Fine, guess I'll swap them out for a new set of PS4Ss. Gave the mobile tire guy who's always at the track a call and he swapped tires for me in my driveway. Not having to stuff a bunch of tires into a car and then drive to the tire shop was truly the ultimate luxury, don't think I can go back.

I did notice this texture on the new tires, guessing it's to enhance contrast for aesthetics.




Fancy all around.

Also, decided to give up on road force balancing. I've always asked for it in the past, but it seems to still result in vibrations at higher speeds (80+ mph). Went with a traditional balance this time around and the car feels perfectly smooth. Good stuff.

Lastly, got a daylight pic of the final final final v3 version of the strut tower bracing. You can barely tell they're not stock. Amazing.

[Bry5on]

New hood seals! Luxurious.

[heinzboehmer]

Aaand done!




Well, not entirely done. Still waiting to receive the flat gaskets that seal against the plug and the filter cover. Oh and need to make the strut tower brackets pretty. I'll get to those details later.

Printed some retainers for the screws as well, to try and make it harder to lose them.



Not sure yet if they make it better or worse. Middle one definitely helps, but the outer two kinda get in the way. Might end up removing the retainers for those.

Also replaced all the hood seals while I was at it, as they were original to the car and kinda starting to fall apart:



I'll try to get some pictures with better lighting this weekend.

[heinzboehmer]

Ha, I have no regrets about the amount of time/money spent on this project. Learned a ton so it was 100% worth it. And like Obioban said, it's a hobby so who cares. Would rather be doing this than just sitting around.

Still pretty crazy to see that number though!

[Obioban]

Everyone stop applying logic to hobby time/money, please.

[George Hill]

Anyway, estimate came out to ~150 hours of active CAD work. Damn, that's a month of 40 hr work weeks... And that doesn't take into account any time in the garage. Woah.

Ya, don't do that, lol.

I just had to add up the costs for the touring CF doors for customs... wish I hadn't

[discoelk]

Adding up hours is like adding up receipts but worse.

[heinzboehmer]

Now imagine you’re managing a mechanical engineering team and need to estimate the time/resources it’s going to take to design a full product that doesn’t exist yet

For this exact reason my first maxim of project management is (somewhat tongue in cheek) "all project management is founded on lies"

In the thick of planning for next year at my real job. I feel the pain...

[karter16]

Now imagine you’re managing a mechanical engineering team and need to estimate the time/resources it’s going to take to design a full product that doesn’t exist yet

For this exact reason my first maxim of project management is (somewhat tongue in cheek) "all project management is founded on lies"

[Bry5on]

Now imagine you’re managing a mechanical engineering team and need to estimate the time/resources it’s going to take to design a full product that doesn’t exist yet

[heinzboehmer]

I love that PET-CF, I print every test project with that because it just looks so goooood 😂

It's amazing, isn't it? I was originally planning on painting these parts to match the stock ones, but they look so good straight out of the printer that I might not even bother.

Thanks for the info! I have a p2S but it’s in my office, so I haven’t ventured out beyond PLA yet.

Im also far behind you in terms of CAD ability! You’re next level!

Yeah fair enough. I wouldn't want to be working next to the printer when it's printing these materials.

And I still kinda suck at CAD, to be honest. I'm very stubborn though, so just spend a ton of time staring at the screen trying to figure it out


I was actually just talking to a friend about the time I've spent on this project. Realized the CAD suite stores the entire version history of a document, so I can estimate how much time I spent designing this stuff. Not a perfect representation as the version history is just a list of changes with their associated timestamps, so have to do a bit of guessing to figure out if I was working in between changes or not. Good enough though.

Anyway, estimate came out to ~150 hours of active CAD work. Damn, that's a month of 40 hr work weeks... And that doesn't take into account any time in the garage. Woah.

[Arclitgold]

Using a Bambu P1S, but I reeeally want a dual nozzle printer. That upgrade will probably be coming soon, but this one has been great for now.

And +1 to both things that Obioban said. The P1S has a filter on the chamber exhaust fan, but I still keep it in a separate room in the garage level that doesn't get much human traffic. I'll open up some doors to the outside if I'm printing stinky stuff for a long time and that seems to keep the fumes under control.

Thanks for the info! I have a p2S but it’s in my office, so I haven’t ventured out beyond PLA yet.

Im also far behind you in terms of CAD ability! You’re next level!

[fattycharged]

I love that PET-CF, I print every test project with that because it just looks so goooood 😂


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[heinzboehmer]

I really have no idea how frequently I should be changing my printer's air filter.

Can't wait to add this next year to my CoreONE: https://www.prusa3d.com/applications...h-indx_243519/

Feels like it should have most the benefits of multiple nozzles, but with up to 8 different materials.

Man, that's super cool.

Am definitely eyeing the Prusa machines as an upgrade to my current one. But I don't need to upgrade, so process has been slow.

[heinzboehmer]

Speaking of printing, here's what the gasket situation ended up at:



Everything that isn't red, green, orange, purple or dark blue is a gasket.

As discussed previously, had to add those bumps to the firewall plug so that there was enough install clearance for the cabin air filter housing, which means they also needed gaskets.

Since there's more space to play with here, I came up with this:




Added some drafts to these bump gaskets and made sure the thickest portion was a flat surface. This should make printing them way easier than the others.

Similarly, the housing gaskets are a crazy shape, but there's space under there, so I just extended them out until the entire thing was flat on one side:



Plug bump gaskets are installed using the same T slot interface as before, which does not work for the housing gaskets, so those are getting glued in. Fortunately, the geometry of the housing gaskets should hold them in well, so the glue is just a backup.

Printed out the bump gaskets first and WOW. I have no idea what I did different to before, but these came out pretty much as perfect as I can expect from a part like this:



You can see the difference in print quality compared to the other plug gaskets I printed in the past:




Housing gaskets print is wrapping up and they're looking as good as these, so gonna reprint the rest of the plug gaskets and swap those over later.

Have also saved the Bambu Studio projects so I can reprint these in the future if necessary. I've noticed the filament only likes to stay dry for about two hours, so I'm having to throw it into the drier in between prints. One of those driers you can print directly out of is definitely going on the Christmas list.

And they work!



Just gotta get through the rest of the printing and assembly and I'll have a finished project

Finally.