Project Update for Sept 27, 2010: What a difference a week makes...
One week ago we had one flare finished, and the car didn't run or stop, and it looked like total crap. Now we've got all 4 flares completed and the bodywork "done" and the car "painted". Now its less craplike. We took huge shortcuts, as you will likely notice. Some of the bodywork is visible under the flat black primer, and the roof likes like a mess. The bottlecaps were just for painting, so ignore those, too.
Friday night was an all-nighter, and Saturday and Sunday were also insanely work days. I lost count of how many people were there. We've worked until midnight or later for so many days in a row I didn't even know what day it was - I had to look it up. We had planned to and paid for an autocross on Sunday in the E30, to test all sorts of things, but missed the paint and bodywork plan by a mile. Let's see what I can remember...
The old E36 K-brand struts we bought for $15 were partially revived (one needed fluid) and turned into coilovers. Costas had fun with the plasma cutter chopping off the old lower perches, and Paul M cleaned up the used coilover adapters these came with on the lathe, for a better fit. They are on the car but we have yet to test them on the road or set ride height. There's some old crusty Eibach springs on the front that came with my '97 M3 when it had TCK struts. They've been on the car for years and sitting on the shelf for longer. 750 #/in and I hope that works. No time to test!
Chris, our wiring fiend, finished the custom E36 ABS wiring harness over Friday and Saturday and ran some old CAT5 for the sensor wiring. Chris and Costas did some testing Friday night in the rain on my wife's E36 M3 and figured out how the pedal position sensor works, and we're adapting it to be a "tunable" ABS. Its pretty complex, and involves expensive items like some painters tape. I'll explain further, if it works. Heh.
Chris was dodging sparks from my welding on the bottoms of the flares the whole time. I think I only barely caught him on fire. I was adding reinforcement plates to the bottom sections to make the box flares more rigid and "cone hit capable".
Chris and Costas got the new harness routed through the dash and car and mounted the ABS computer as well as the truck ECU in the glove box. It looks cleaner than the pics here show.
I started out Friday by cutting the top left flare off and fixing a lot of bends and angle problems. After taking some time checking angles I found the problem, made a little patch panel to bridge the gap from the flare top to the fender, and got it all welded back together and the underside brackets built and welded in place. The right front fender had similar problems, as the hammer formed top was made from the same (incorrectly cut) pattern, so that was some extra fun there, too. Somewhere in there McCall and I made rear bumper brackets (very light, also made from electrical conduit and scrap sheet). So the rear bumper was mounted and attached to the flares at the leading edges. Lined up pretty well (better than the front) but with so many pics in this update I didn't show it.
Paul M and Jason helped me cut and hold and hammer these front flares into shape. I don't know how many hours I spent welding on these but it was a lot. Probably 20 hours just from this weekend alone was spent on the front flares. We did a lot of spot welding and hammer/dolly work fixes to the rears before bodywork began, too. Making custom steel box flares is a LOT of freagin work. Trust me on that one. We have probably 60-80 hours in the layout, cutting, fab work, grinding, and bodywork on these flares. And they are far from perfect - we were pretty rushed on the front pair. 4 people worked on them over the course of the last 2 weeks. That 60-80 hour number might be low, too. It didn't help that we'd never made anything like these, of course.
We had a volunteer that knows paint and body pretty well help us this weekend on the bodywork and some of the spraying. He didn't want to be named so we'll call him The Underpants Gnome. TUG did the mud work on the rear flares, hood and trunk for about 8 hours on Saturday and told us we were insane to think we'd be autocrossing the next day. He got the rears shot with primer after that full day of bodywork, and said he needed another week to get the bodywork right. The roof, doors, and front fenders were not touched yet. We had another full day. Hmm...
So Saturday night we decided to punt and pound out what we could on Sunday. "Right" was far from our goal. We needed "good enough at 50 mph". Jason, Matt, Amy and I poured another 12 hours on Sunday and mudded/shaped/sanded the front fenders and roof "quick and dirty", and just ran the D.A. over the doors quick and got to taping and cleaning. We poured in an entire day of bodywork, sanding and prep - done by people that had little to no skills in this area. We're racers, not bodymen!
We got it looking good enough from 50 feet, so we degreased the body and trunk and rolled it outside. Even with heavy winds gusting to 25 mph Jason sprayed a coat of sandable primer (mostly) on the car and all of the panels by 5 pm Sunday, while Matt, Amy and I held up a 20' x 10' tarp to block the wind. We don't have a paint booth, you know?? The winds were knocking us over holding this huge sail, but it deflected some of the wind away from the spray gun.
We ran to grab food at 6 pm and were back sanding this now dried primer coat by 7:30. We had it sanded, cleaned and ready to shoot by 8 pm, when TUG shot some black primer on the whole car and we were done by 9 pm. We were all ready to collapse but we got it sprayed. Always bet on black!
This morning I went out early and pulled the paper and tape off the car and panels. We'll put it together tonight and try to get some sort of testing done tomorrow. Probably something illegal and insanely dangerous. We pack up the trailer Wednesday to go 17 hours to Gainesville, Florida for the $2010 GRM Challenge. We might be wrenching in the trailer on the way. Its OK - it has lights inside... Costas, McCall, Matt and I will be there with the E30, one way or another. It will likely have zero testing, and might explode into a huge fireball, but we're going to be there and make loud noises.
Bleary eyed. I'm going to crawl under my desk and take a much needed nap. More soon...
One week ago we had one flare finished, and the car didn't run or stop, and it looked like total crap. Now we've got all 4 flares completed and the bodywork "done" and the car "painted". Now its less craplike. We took huge shortcuts, as you will likely notice. Some of the bodywork is visible under the flat black primer, and the roof likes like a mess. The bottlecaps were just for painting, so ignore those, too.
Friday night was an all-nighter, and Saturday and Sunday were also insanely work days. I lost count of how many people were there. We've worked until midnight or later for so many days in a row I didn't even know what day it was - I had to look it up. We had planned to and paid for an autocross on Sunday in the E30, to test all sorts of things, but missed the paint and bodywork plan by a mile. Let's see what I can remember...
The old E36 K-brand struts we bought for $15 were partially revived (one needed fluid) and turned into coilovers. Costas had fun with the plasma cutter chopping off the old lower perches, and Paul M cleaned up the used coilover adapters these came with on the lathe, for a better fit. They are on the car but we have yet to test them on the road or set ride height. There's some old crusty Eibach springs on the front that came with my '97 M3 when it had TCK struts. They've been on the car for years and sitting on the shelf for longer. 750 #/in and I hope that works. No time to test!
Chris, our wiring fiend, finished the custom E36 ABS wiring harness over Friday and Saturday and ran some old CAT5 for the sensor wiring. Chris and Costas did some testing Friday night in the rain on my wife's E36 M3 and figured out how the pedal position sensor works, and we're adapting it to be a "tunable" ABS. Its pretty complex, and involves expensive items like some painters tape. I'll explain further, if it works. Heh.
Chris was dodging sparks from my welding on the bottoms of the flares the whole time. I think I only barely caught him on fire. I was adding reinforcement plates to the bottom sections to make the box flares more rigid and "cone hit capable".
Chris and Costas got the new harness routed through the dash and car and mounted the ABS computer as well as the truck ECU in the glove box. It looks cleaner than the pics here show.
I started out Friday by cutting the top left flare off and fixing a lot of bends and angle problems. After taking some time checking angles I found the problem, made a little patch panel to bridge the gap from the flare top to the fender, and got it all welded back together and the underside brackets built and welded in place. The right front fender had similar problems, as the hammer formed top was made from the same (incorrectly cut) pattern, so that was some extra fun there, too. Somewhere in there McCall and I made rear bumper brackets (very light, also made from electrical conduit and scrap sheet). So the rear bumper was mounted and attached to the flares at the leading edges. Lined up pretty well (better than the front) but with so many pics in this update I didn't show it.
Paul M and Jason helped me cut and hold and hammer these front flares into shape. I don't know how many hours I spent welding on these but it was a lot. Probably 20 hours just from this weekend alone was spent on the front flares. We did a lot of spot welding and hammer/dolly work fixes to the rears before bodywork began, too. Making custom steel box flares is a LOT of freagin work. Trust me on that one. We have probably 60-80 hours in the layout, cutting, fab work, grinding, and bodywork on these flares. And they are far from perfect - we were pretty rushed on the front pair. 4 people worked on them over the course of the last 2 weeks. That 60-80 hour number might be low, too. It didn't help that we'd never made anything like these, of course.
We had a volunteer that knows paint and body pretty well help us this weekend on the bodywork and some of the spraying. He didn't want to be named so we'll call him The Underpants Gnome. TUG did the mud work on the rear flares, hood and trunk for about 8 hours on Saturday and told us we were insane to think we'd be autocrossing the next day. He got the rears shot with primer after that full day of bodywork, and said he needed another week to get the bodywork right. The roof, doors, and front fenders were not touched yet. We had another full day. Hmm...
So Saturday night we decided to punt and pound out what we could on Sunday. "Right" was far from our goal. We needed "good enough at 50 mph". Jason, Matt, Amy and I poured another 12 hours on Sunday and mudded/shaped/sanded the front fenders and roof "quick and dirty", and just ran the D.A. over the doors quick and got to taping and cleaning. We poured in an entire day of bodywork, sanding and prep - done by people that had little to no skills in this area. We're racers, not bodymen!
We got it looking good enough from 50 feet, so we degreased the body and trunk and rolled it outside. Even with heavy winds gusting to 25 mph Jason sprayed a coat of sandable primer (mostly) on the car and all of the panels by 5 pm Sunday, while Matt, Amy and I held up a 20' x 10' tarp to block the wind. We don't have a paint booth, you know?? The winds were knocking us over holding this huge sail, but it deflected some of the wind away from the spray gun.
We ran to grab food at 6 pm and were back sanding this now dried primer coat by 7:30. We had it sanded, cleaned and ready to shoot by 8 pm, when TUG shot some black primer on the whole car and we were done by 9 pm. We were all ready to collapse but we got it sprayed. Always bet on black!
This morning I went out early and pulled the paper and tape off the car and panels. We'll put it together tonight and try to get some sort of testing done tomorrow. Probably something illegal and insanely dangerous. We pack up the trailer Wednesday to go 17 hours to Gainesville, Florida for the $2010 GRM Challenge. We might be wrenching in the trailer on the way. Its OK - it has lights inside... Costas, McCall, Matt and I will be there with the E30, one way or another. It will likely have zero testing, and might explode into a huge fireball, but we're going to be there and make loud noises.
Bleary eyed. I'm going to crawl under my desk and take a much needed nap. More soon...
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