Progress!
First up, sliced test fit piece for verifying the contour of the bonding surface:
Looking good! It's hard to hold the piece and take pictures at the same time, so some of the surfaces (top, mostly) look like they're not sitting flush, but the fit is much better in real life.
Checking wiper linkage clearance:
No issues there.
I did, however, find that the passenger side of the mount extended too far and would interfere with the braces. Made a couple changes to the design and printed yet another prototype:
This time everything actually fit! Braces are still slightly too long, so they are interfering with themselves, but cutting them down will solve that:
Took some measurements and decided where I want the fasteners to live. Here's a visual reference of their locations in space:
Orange cylinders are where the braces will get fastened to the piece and green cylinder is the virtual point where the two braces would intersect. Looking pretty decent there as well.
I did, unfortunately, have to make the decision to move the fastener location on the strut bar piggyback clamps. Instead of having the braces attach behind the strut bar studs (as previously designed), they will attach to the innermost stud, underneath the stock bracket. Things are too tight in that area to have that attachment point where I wanted it previously, but this should still work well.
The change is a bit easier to explain with a picture:
The bar is attached where it will now go and the hole in the 3D printed bracket is where I originally wanted it to go. With this change, the brackets aren't strictly necessary, as all that's needed is a longer inner stud, but I'll be keeping it to reinforce the cast factory strut bar end piece. I'm still 50/50 on whether they will crack when I hit the first pot hole or not
Here's a dry fit of the entire thing:
Looking very promising!
Also, you can probably tell that the driver's side brace is very much in the way of my current dipstick location. Unfortunate, but not a big deal. I'll likely just swap over to the CSL dipstick.
First up, sliced test fit piece for verifying the contour of the bonding surface:
Looking good! It's hard to hold the piece and take pictures at the same time, so some of the surfaces (top, mostly) look like they're not sitting flush, but the fit is much better in real life.
Checking wiper linkage clearance:
No issues there.
I did, however, find that the passenger side of the mount extended too far and would interfere with the braces. Made a couple changes to the design and printed yet another prototype:
This time everything actually fit! Braces are still slightly too long, so they are interfering with themselves, but cutting them down will solve that:
Took some measurements and decided where I want the fasteners to live. Here's a visual reference of their locations in space:
Orange cylinders are where the braces will get fastened to the piece and green cylinder is the virtual point where the two braces would intersect. Looking pretty decent there as well.
I did, unfortunately, have to make the decision to move the fastener location on the strut bar piggyback clamps. Instead of having the braces attach behind the strut bar studs (as previously designed), they will attach to the innermost stud, underneath the stock bracket. Things are too tight in that area to have that attachment point where I wanted it previously, but this should still work well.
The change is a bit easier to explain with a picture:
The bar is attached where it will now go and the hole in the 3D printed bracket is where I originally wanted it to go. With this change, the brackets aren't strictly necessary, as all that's needed is a longer inner stud, but I'll be keeping it to reinforce the cast factory strut bar end piece. I'm still 50/50 on whether they will crack when I hit the first pot hole or not
Here's a dry fit of the entire thing:
Looking very promising!
Also, you can probably tell that the driver's side brace is very much in the way of my current dipstick location. Unfortunate, but not a big deal. I'll likely just swap over to the CSL dipstick.
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