My '75 2002 Sleeper

[IronFreak]

It has a deep throat.........

[Bmwdayz]

Definitely a huge English wheel!

[willworkfore30s]

Nut Cracker?

Na, my guess would be:

Air hammer or English wheel.

Either way some metal shaping awesomness should ensue

[LJ851]

Not to give away too much, but I came to the conclusion I'll be needing this in the near future for "things". Kudo's to those that know what it is and what it does.

Stargate.

[freeride53]

i can't deal with this stuff. too hawt. op, keep doing what u do plz.

[Habla]

Sheet metal fender flares! Or any other curvaceous metal panel...

[E30_Pare]

^Nope.

Google planishing hammer.

What is he going to make with that contraption?! sub'd

[giantkeeper]

I've missed these updates! It's good to see you working on this again.

[Farbin Kaiber]

^Nope.

Google planishing hammer.

[rturbo 930]

I'm gonna say, english wheel or some kind of press.

[tinkwithanr]

Thanks guys.


Always a good call.




Not to give away too much, but I came to the conclusion I'll be needing this in the near future for "things". Kudo's to those that know what it is and what it does.

[Batz]

Awesome build! Sub'd

[badnerd]

fapppssss soooo hard!!!

awesome!

[tinkwithanr]

Thanks guys!

As fun as it's been fitting the rear wheels, I've come to the conclusion that the front is gonna be even more 'fun'. To start I threw the front tires on and got to work trimming the front of the wheel wells. Sadly this meant cutting into my custom front mounts, but I can always make more. Here you can see the area along the bottom that needed to be trimmed.




I still need to remove the springs from the coils and check that it will clear lock to lock under full compression, but it seems to be in the ballpark. This meant that I could turn my focus to the rear of the front wheel wells. The passenger side was simple enough, trim away sheet metal until the tire doesn't hit anymore. In the end the passenger will loose a little bit of leg room, but I don't think I'll be sitting over there that much lol. I still need to take the cuts a bit higher to account for suspension compression, but it shouldn't need to be any higher than the outer fender brace at the top of the pic.




View from passenger side. Not to intrusive.




Next up was the driver side. To be honest I've been kind of avoiding working on this section just because I hadn't really though of a way to do it properly yet. The main problem:




It's not entirely clear from the pic, but the clutch master cylinder and the tire wanted to occupy the same space. And seeing as my thesis on 4th dimensional physics has taken a back seat to this project, I had to figure out a different place for the clutch master. A few ideas had gone through my mind, from angling the clutch pedal (bad idea) to making a special linkage to raise the master cylinder up and over. I really wasn't satisfied with this idea either. It would add extra complexity that I didn't need, wouldn't save that much space, and to top it all off as soon as the tire cleared the master cylinder it would start hitting the pedal mount itself.

This was the best picture I could get of the interference. The fact I couldn't get a better one just goes to show how tight things are in there.




Then I got an idea. I took a couple measurements, said some prayers, and took a saw to my pretty pedal assembly....

Turning this:





Into this:




Which then let's the tire do this:




With the master cylinder now sitting here, snuggly in the engine compartent:




With the pictures out of the way, some more technical jargin. You may have noticed how close the clutch pedal now looks to the brake. That's a combination of a few things. First, the camera angle exaggerates it due to the fact the clutch pedal was positioned much further forward compared to the brake and gas. This can easily be adjusted in the linkage, I just didn't bother at the time. Second, the clutch pedal isn't sitting square to the firewall due to the fact that I reused existing holes in the firewall to mock the pedal in place. Once I finalize where I need it to go I'll weld in a new, reinforced section of steel to make sure the pedal is securely mounted. The thin gauge material that's there now wouldn't really cut it.

Another concern I had initially was that the floor mounted brake and gas pedals wouldn't travel along the same path as the clutch, resulting in an awkward feel from the pedals. However, after testing them, the path of travel is remarkably similar. Plus the fact that the clutch will always be operated with your left foot, and the brake + gas pedals with your right, I don't see it being an issue. I'm sure the setup will need some more fine tuning, and I'll need to add some stronger mounting points for the clutch pedal (all of the mounts for the original 3-pedal setup were left on the brake-gas assembly), but overall I think it will end up being a simple and effective solution.

And with that I'll just leave a few pics as she sits now. The more I look at the front turbo dam, the more I think it's not wide enough anymore...










Thanks for looking!

[1owNslo]

sweet car man. what an awesome build