heinzboehmer's 2002 Topaz 6MT Coupe

[heinzboehmer]

A few quick distractions from the (obviously more important) euro cubby project.

First up, yearly brake flush. Didn't see tons of bubbles, but fluid had seen better days:



With the car up in the air, I also replaced the trim around the RTABs, as it was starting to fall apart:




Unfortunately, I also noticed this while under the car:




Guess the years are starting to catch up to the M3...

Fortunately the rust was super minor and there was tons of good metal underneath:




I also found a tiny bit of rust on the tabs that hold the plastic panels and the v brace mounting points. But, once again, lots of good metal underneath:







Strategy for solving this is the following:

• Expose good, bare metal
• Few coats of POR15
• Wait for it to fully dry
• Clean with isopropyl alcohol
• Hit the area with a heat gun to make sure there is absolutely zero moisture left
• Few coats of rubberized undercoating
• Few coats of SEM EZ Coat in olive green
• Reassemble and act as if nothing ever happened

Since I was going to be spraying thick undercoat, I needed to figure out how to mask the areas where the rubber grommets and v brace attach to. Decided to print out some plugs to leave a nice perimeter around the holes in the chassis.

Given that I was printing the plugs, I was able to precisely control the clearance between the undercoat and grommets/v brace. Opted for a much tighter clearance than factory (1.5 mm for grommets, 3mm for v brace):






Grommet plug is a three piece TPU/ABS design. The tapered insert screws into the plug and expands the TPU against the chassis. This keeps it firmly in place, but also allows for easy removal.

V brace plug is just ABS with a threaded portion that screws into the chassis. Only important feature is the taper on the plug used to leave room for the welds on the v brace boss.

My hope is that a tighter clearance will help keep rocks and other road debris from chipping away the POR15, which should help this repair last longer.

Here's how everything came out:




End result is okay. By no means professional grade, but I'm incredibly incompetent when it comes to anything paint related. It is raining this weekend, so a couple drives should be enough to hide any imperfections. Just happy that the rust is properly addressed!

[heinzboehmer]

Put me in line too. I've always liked this cubby and this is a super clever solution.

Totally!

[George Hill]

You thinking about... renting this tool out?

Put me in line too. I've always liked this cubby and this is a super clever solution.

[heinzboehmer]

You thinking about... renting this tool out?

I figured others would be interested in the tool. Happy to rent it out if it actually works.

I'll post all the CAD stuff too in case anyone wants to make their own. The tool will be entirely made of 3D printed and laser cut parts as well as off the shelf electronics and hardware. <$150 all in.

[Obioban]

I always assumed the same, which is why I never truly looked into doing the retrofit. If everything works out as planned, this should be a ~1hr job after all the quirks of the tooling are figured out.

Euro cubby arrives next week, will try to find some time then to make some more progress on this.

You thinking about... renting this tool out?