Been a couple of months since the last update in January, I've been holding back on post anything but I thought I would do an update on some of the bits I've been working on, nothing too major but hopefully interesting stuff.
Starting off was some simple little modifications, there was nothing more annoying than getting in the car in the middle of winter or at night and not being able to see anything in the dark interior. I 3D printed a little holder for some LED circuit board that fitted to the role cage and put it on a small plug. I'd already wired in a switch to the dash when I redid that earlier in the year.
It does a great job at night lighting up the whole interior of the car. It was great for working on the car when we still had some dark nights, powered from a perminent feed so can be switched on without the key in the igniton,
Steering wheel cover to keep it clean from my grubby hands and fading from the sun as I don't run a quick release boss.
So earlier in the year I had already been on the search for reducing some weight out of the car. I found 16kg in the doors as well as finding another approx 6kg of additional weight in things like hand brake mechanism and hinges from the boot. I have this in a box for weighing so will do a more accurate post on weight soon.
I mounted the boot on two quick release pins but kept the boot latch working on the key, mainly because it gives a solid mounting point as well as locking the boot onto the car.
However the boot wasn't just done for the purpose of saying a few kg's from the hinges...
The purpose was to enable proper mounting of this to the chassis...
1.6m wide fibreglass wing.. here is a photo of it when it arrived... Explanation for why I've gone down this route is at the end of the post...
However prior to this I had been doing some CAD work. Actual CAD work not just Cardboard Aided Design this time.
First job was drawing the profile of the wing I was planning on purchasing into CAD to ensure proper mounting, with suitable adjustment to give a range between 0-9 degrees, with the aim to run somewhere between 4-7 degree of wing angle.
With the legs I went for my own style of design mounting to the standard hinges, I wanted the legs mounting parallel to each other for aesthetics mainly so the little cut out at the rear is for the mounts to clear the bodywork.
I went for a standard BMW looking end plate often seen on a lot of E46 M3's and E92's
I did some testing of the material and had no issues of it being made from a much thinner material with cut outs but for the sake of a few grams I decided I would make it from 8mm aluminum, I also prefer the wings without cutouts, but I might make a second version with cutouts in the future just to test.
Before actually making them I did a quick test of the profile by cutting out some MDF and mounting the underside brackets.
Looks quite high with the boot removed but I reduced the height of the wing down by 100mm from version one. At this point the aero foil is just placed on the underside brackets as they require profiling and then bonding to the underside of the wing
From the CAD model I had the legs laser cut from the 8mm Aluminum, pictured with the fibreglass mounts for the underside of the aerofoil
Quick test fit to test the aluminium hardware I machined to take up the angle offset in the body work.
Boot marked out for cutting.
Mounts painted in BMW Black Saphine paint the same as the body work.
Mounted in position, You can just see the aluminium bosses to mount it to the factory hinge mounts. The last job now was to laser cut the end plates, at the moment I have just laser cut the profile from some plastic to get an idea for mounting, shape and style, will laser cut a final version soon or make some carbon end plates. The underside mounted were also bonded to the underside of the wing as well as bolted into the captive nuts in the underside of the wing.
Sat on the wet wheels but it gives a good idea on the appearance and height of the wing.
Still plenty more to come but I'll leave it there for the moment. Have been doing some more research into engine modifications and will be doing some final tweeks and developments with the wing but I'm really happy with the progress of it so far. I wanted to make something that was functional, not just an aesthetic item, for that reason I wanted it to be correctly mounted to the chassis rather than just mounted to the boot. Lots of 330's run the Tegiwa wing but I think it looks a little narrow for my liking so I went down the route of making my own.
I also wanted to see what difference some downforce onto the rear of the car would make, I have often found the car a little tail happy, if you're seen some of the youtube videos you might have seen, I've ran different spring rates, alignment, dropped the rear ride height etc but It would be a lot more confidence inspiring with a more planted rear end which led me at the point where I wanted to make something that functions well, as well as putting it all together myself, we'll see if it makes a difference to how the car handles.