We are also trying to work on the engine.
The goal is to mount the engine before 2013 ends…
We already assembled the clutch to make a customized bushing for the clutch bearing.
X-mas or not we needed to finish the diff job.
Dirk skipped the turkey and presents and spent the entire X-mas day in and under the car. The back end is back on track now. Fortunately Guy assisted in this diff-icult matter. The right man for the job… and everything works out fine.
The diff bolts glide in the holes now !! Big smile…
Pity about the lost time but it was necessary…
It took some extra time and is perhaps a bit oversized but we were not planning to take any risks anymore.
We drilled 2 30mm holes in a massive ST 52.3 block so the bolts from the diff fit exactly. In these holes the 2 bushing that support the diff will be mounted. We kept the original principle but improved it a bit with stronger materials.
The differential will be fixed with ARP 2000 studs.
Tomorrow it will be welded and painted.
We had the intention to make some giant steps this weekend but we had a major setback.
What was intended to be a 15 min job turned out to be a 2 day job. That’s life (as we know it)
We needed to change the bolts by the super strong ARP ones. When we were trying to bolt the diff to the car it did not fit well. We almost needed the strongest man alive to bolt it together so that was the signal that there was something wrong. It wasn’t aligned anymore due to the the high welding temperatures during construction.
We decided to tear down the entire painted construction to start all over again.. It was not the most popular decision we ever made but it was necessary…
Learning from this problem we also tried to improve the construction. Instead of different parts welded together we planned to make one piece with the same functionality as before.
Dirk spent an entire afternoon in the comfortable M3 trunk with a grinder. It took some effort to get the job done. Within a few days (nights) everything will be ok. Dirk won’t be sorry for that…
We think that our crankshaft damper is cursed because initially the 60-2 trigger wheel was not correct lasered. WE had sent a wrong dxf where the spaces were not wide enough.
At arrival we immediately welded the index wheel on the BMW motorsport damper under local anesthesia (wrapped with wet towels) with our TIG welding device.
Everything worked out fine. The patient didn’t die on us but… the geometry was wrong !!
Because it was welded we tried to find anther VR crankshaft sensor that was able to cope with this geometry. We even found one at McLaren but we couldn’t afford us that one.
Bert proposed a good solution : wire EDM. After this process we were convinced that everything was ok now ; geometry : ok ; roundness : ok
We thought we only needed to put this on the engine.. Bosch spec stipulates we need 160.43mm diameter. Ok for us (we thought) But the water pump cover was very close to the wheel…
It was possible to take away 5 mm of metal and use a recessed bolt so we ended with 3mm of space.
Although it was already December the temperature rose in the R-box workshop because throwing it away was not an option.
All well that ends well.
All oil, fuel and brake lines ar almost in place.
A few months ago we spent days welding M4 nuts to make the fixing of the lines easy.. Some people thought we were also nuts.
Some pictures to give an impression.
It got a bit crowdy in the trunk so we needed to remove the pumps and filters to mount al the fuel lines.
These pictures will follow soon…
As everybody already knows we are not going to use an old fashioned hydraulic steering system but an electrical one. The MOSEFET’s are sometimes electrified with 40A, to make life bearable for these components we have 2 options : always drive in a straight line of give some extra cooling… Eventually we went for option 2.
We don’t have enough room to install a big cooler so we choose for a heat conductive paste on a 15 mm thick aluminum plate fixed in an isolated way against the firewall. The heat from the firewall (engine) should not be distributed to the EPS. This is also a way to eliminate vibrations. A principle we also used on the other electronic boxes. At the back side of the plate we will fix a small cooling profile but that is not visible in the picture yet.
The ECU is basically the same story but is mounted on the drive shaft tunnel.
To supply enough cool air to the airbox we needed to find a suitable location for the air filter.
It should not be near to the hot engine. We do not have room next to the radiator because we used all the space available to make the cooler as large as apossible.
Only the lower left corner was possible. We made an aluminium gap. The upper side is connected by a custom duct to the air box. On the lower sude e need to invent a construction to prevent water coming in from the wheels and the road. We can also use the air ducts from the oversized brakes to feed the filter with lots of cold air.
To perfectly fit the TFT screens the frames needed to be glued in the dash at a correct leveled way.
Since kindergarten Dirk always makes a mess of gluing the wrong things together..(like his hands..)
We were convinced that this was the way to fix things for eternity but after a few hours we noticed that the product used was not suitable for the job. The next day the sticky product needed to be removed.
The next day father Denis did the same thing but this time with polyester and fiber carpets. It was a mess doing this but the result was ok. The frames were fixed.
The back side of the dash is not going to win a beauty contest but the visible front side looks nice !
The dash has been brought to the Netherlands to be “flocked”.
These are the pics as it is now. The “flocked” dash is expected at the end of next week.
Because we need to fill our washer tank from time to time the initial location we picked was not suitable.
We had hidden a round reservoir underneath the windscreen and plastic cover on the navoiator side of the car. We thought this was a ingenious idea but there was no room left for the filler cap.
This meant Dirk needed to make another tank starting from some home made pieces.. it seemed like arts and crafts in the kinder garten again.
The new washer tank has a content of 2 litre so we think we have enough water to drive from service to service.
