More work on the Design

Look forward to having something that looks like this in my garage. Got a long way to go.

The Beginning of the Chassis

After months of planning and preparation today I started building the chassis.

Installation of my New Camera

Installed my new wide angle HD camera which can take pictures at regular intervals.

So far all I have done is prepare to build a car. Now everything is ready I can finally start making it and now I have the camera to record the process.

Build Table - Complete

Finally finished the build table. What this has taught me is that my welding isn't good enough yet to start welding the chassis. The welds look strong but are very messy. I'm going to continue practice welding on off cuts until it is up to par and in the mean time I still have some more parts to strip off the BMW. I can also start to tack weld some of the chassis and build it up on my new table.

 Test assemble to check it all fits together.

Tool box red. Not going to misplace this in a hurry.

Build Table - Continued

More done today on the build table.

 Test fit the castors.

Suspension & Design Rendering

Commuting to London everyday for work gives me time to work on the design. I want to get most of the design decision worked out before I start building the chassis. I use Autodesk Inventor, which is an incredible piece of software, as it allows me to see how things will go together, whether parts interfere with each other and get a feel for what the completed car is going to look like when complete.

I have spend a lot of time working out the suspension geometries and have now built them in Inventor to see how they look and fit together with the chassis design.

Build Table Build

Made good progress this weekend putting together the build table. Started by putting the wooden top together so I had a flat surface to lay the steel box section on to weld it together.

Lighting and Welding Practice

Today I replaced the single light bulb in my garage with two fluorescent strip lights. This has made such a massive improvement to the light that I can actually see what I'm doing now!

  

Last week I had some metal box section arrive which gave me the chance to start welding practice. I haven't welded anything for over 15 years and quickly realised I am going to need a lot of practice :-)

Its a good job I have small welding project to practice on. I have designed a build table which will be used to build the chassis upon. Hopefully by the time I have welded the table my welding skills will be good enough to start welding the chassis. If not I'm going to find a welding course.

Chassis Design - Continued

Over the last month I have done a lot of design work on the chassis design. As now I am able to measure the parts from the BMW I have been able to finalise parts of the design such as the rear suspension.

The rear suspension will use the BMW hubs and bearings but the upright will be fabricated from sheet metal. I have also decided to use the same handbrake method as E36 with brake shoes within the disc actuated with cables the the brake lever. For the caliper I have decided on Wilwood Dynapro Singles (See Design & Components section).

As I am getting close to being able to start fabricating the chassis I wanted to confirm that the body work would look right over the chassis I have designed. Because the BMW M44 engine is quite tall I had to increase the height of the bonnet section whilst trying to maintain the correct lines. I am really pleased how this has come out as I was worried that it may not look correctly proportioned.

After much contemplation I have decided to make my own nosecone. I realise this is going to be difficult but I think the end result will look much better as I can get the clean lines I want.

 Rough dimension-ed sketch of the engine to make sure it all fits in OK.

Engine Removal

Very busy day today! Earlier this week I purchased the mild steel box section for building the chassis and as it was going to be delivered today I took a day off work. I had decided that whilst I was waiting for the delivery I would finally finish removing the engine.

 

Chassis Design

Over the last few weeks I haven't done a great deal of work on the BMW; however I have been doing a lot of work on the design. Having the donor has meant I have been able to measure the engine and draw up a very crude representation in my CAD software. As soon as I tried to fit the engine into my original chassis it became clear I had under estimated the size of the engine and there was no way it would fit. Since then I have had to re-draw most of the chassis again. This also means I will have to check the suspension geometry as the front pickups will be further apart now.

Differential removal

Last day of the christmas holiday today so was determined to get as much done as possible, starting with removing the diff. Took rear wheels off (cursing that I hadn't loosened the nuts when it was on the ground!), removed the rear anti roll bar for better access to the diff and then had another go a the bolts that beat me before. As they had been soaking in WD40 for the last two days they came of much easier this time. Next I got to use my new Torx socket set to remove the drive shafts from the diff, which was surprisingly easier than I had expected. Finally removed the three mounting bolts and the diff was out.

Diff on the way down.

Very dirty diff on my work bench.

Once the diff was out I removed the rear half of the propshaft. The BMW propshaft is in two pieces and as access the the bolts holding the front half the the gearbox was so difficult I decided to leave it in place and remove it when I remove the engine and gearbox.

Suspension geometry - Part 1

After giving up removing the diff from the BMW I decided to work on the design. As I remembered to measure the steering rack I was able to start planning the suspension geometry.

Whilst static the wheels are 1 degree in negative camber.

In cornering the body rolls 3 degrees before the outside wheel gains positive camber.

As I have chosen to use a relatively short swing axle length (SAL) of 1600mm to improve cornering geometry, the wheel geometry alters quite a lot in squat and droop. The images below are 50mm squat and droop.