heinzboehmer's 2002 Topaz 6MT Coupe

[Mike RT4]

Loving the E86 brace - top "thinking outside the box" work as usual .

[heinzboehmer]

Also, was working on recreating the silicone mold in CAD last night and it occurred to me that I might also be able to make the piece that goes under the windshield out of laser cut sheet metal. Would have to add some walls to box in the structurally important sections and have someone weld it up, but it might just work.

I'll likely design both a 3D printable/CNC machinable version and a sheet metal version, then decide which one to go with.

The top clamps for the stock strut bar will definitely need to be 3D printed.

[heinzboehmer]

lol. My workbench right now hears your disassembly plight.



That said... only really added ~5 minutes to disassembly.

Ha, there you go!

And yeah, the extra time overhead isn't too bad. I just don't want to deal with the possibility of losing my alignment whenever I go to do something in the engine bay.

I've had good experience with craftcloud for metal 3D printing.
https://craftcloud3d.com/

Nice thank you, I'll check them out.

[Obioban]

There's a bunch of online vendors that will do metal 3D printing and ship worldwide. Not sure who I'm gonna go with yet (have yet to decide on materials), but I'll post all that info in this thread.

I've had good experience with craftcloud for metal 3D printing.

https://craftcloud3d.com/

[Obioban]

lol. My workbench right now hears your disassembly plight.



That said... only really added ~5 minutes to disassembly.

[0-60motorsports]

There's a bunch of online vendors that will do metal 3D printing and ship worldwide. Not sure who I'm gonna go with yet (have yet to decide on materials), but I'll post all that info in this thread.

Thats good to know. Thanks buddy.

[heinzboehmer]

Awesome Thanks! Wil just have to find someone in the USA to print them for me in the correct material.

There's a bunch of online vendors that will do metal 3D printing and ship worldwide. Not sure who I'm gonna go with yet (have yet to decide on materials), but I'll post all that info in this thread.

[0-60motorsports]

Yeah I'm pretty excited about it. Will share all the design files when I'm done in case anyone wants to recreate this on their car.

Awesome Thanks! Wil just have to find someone in the USA to print them for me in the correct material.

[heinzboehmer]

Also, forgot to mention earlier, but I also designed this top clamp to go over the stock strut bar. The purpose of it is add rigidity to the bottom sheet metal clamp. There will be a torque trying to bend it away from horizontal (or close to) and this clamp should help with that. However, it's totally possible that the final geometry makes this clamp essentially redundant. We'll see.

[heinzboehmer]

That E86 Brace idea is perfect! Good thinking. I am just imagining how easy it'll be to work on the engine as you said. Thanks.

Yeah I'm pretty excited about it. Will share all the design files when I'm done in case anyone wants to recreate this on their car.

[0-60motorsports]

That E86 Brace idea is perfect! Good thinking. I am just imagining how easy it'll be to work on the engine as you said. Thanks.

[heinzboehmer]

Braces arrived today, this should turn out pretty great:



I will need to shorten the ends a bit and redrill the holes for the fasteners. Fortunately the flat part is pretty long, so I'll have space. The shortened braces should line up pretty much perfectly with the base of the windshield. I plan to keep my windshield attachment point pretty tight to the existing structure, so that the braces are as parallel as possible to the plane of the windshield.

Also, here that crash safety feature I was talking about:



Will definitely sleep better at night knowing that that exists.

[heinzboehmer]

Sneak peek at side project #57: Took the M3 to the dentist today and got it fitted for braces:





Plan is to design a windshield cowl attachment point with two studs that I can fasten E86 Z4 braces to. Many reasons why I chose those, but it basically boils down to them being BMW parts and having a notch at the bottom that allows them to buckle in a front end collision. BMW didn't design the E46 chassis to be seeing significant rearward force in the middle of the windshield and I'd very much like to keep all the engine bay stuff out of the passenger compartment when I go head on into a wall.

Oh and the biggest benefit of this design is that it'll be three piece! Definitely gonna be less stiff than Slon's (although hard to quantify by how much), but it'll make working on the engine so much nicer. Won't have to be worrying about losing my alignment settings whenever I'm in there

To attach the braces to the strut towers, I designed these brackets:




The tab going to the top hat stud is there to help reinforce the stock cast aluminum piece. It still might now survive though. If it doesn't, I'll redesign the entire thing and get it printed in an appropriate material.

Anyway, waiting on the E86 braces to show up. Will update as I get farther along with this.

Oh! I did also manage to (almost) retrofit the euro cubby into one of my test dashes:



Need to tweak the vinyl cuts and dies a bit, but it's getting there. More to come...

[WestBankM4]

Headliner is a nice pickup Heinze! I've been keeping my feelers out for one, just so I can throw it in storage for my roof project in 2055.

[George Hill]

My best guess is that it came from the foil that seals the oil bottles. Definitely looks very similar:

That was my guess too.