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.