homemade MINI Cooper front splitter

How are the aluminium threaded inserts attached to the spliter? Are they epoxied to the upper side or are they under the top layer of carbon?.

Awesome BTW

njansenv wrote: One concern I'd have (at least around here) is less about whether it's "legal" (it's not illegal....), and more about "if I hit a pedestrian, will I get sued for making changes to the car that increased the extent of the injuries". Just a thought.

Ever seen a rat rod, T bucket, 7 clone, Cobra kit etc etc running around? I don't think you've got much to worry about.

njansenv wrote: One concern I'd have (at least around here) is less about whether it's "legal" (it's not illegal....), and more about "if I hit a pedestrian, will I get sued for making changes to the car that increased the extent of the injuries". Just a thought. VERY, VERY cool build though...and it reminds me that I need to work on a CF project sometime.

That's possible I suppose, but then I'd be suspecting that the claimant has collided with his second MINI.

m

Adrian_Thompson wrote: How are the aluminium threaded inserts attached to the spliter? Are they epoxied to the upper side or are they under the top layer of carbon?. Awesome BTW

From the second to last picture, I'd say he drilled through the splitter (the size of the center post on the insert), put the insert on the bottom, and then threaded in. You could certainly use some light glue to make assembly easier, but I wouldn't put them between layers of the CF (you'll make voids or big chunks of resin where it tries to make up the height difference), and putting the weight bearing surface on the bottom avoids trying to pull apart any epoxy.

The inserts are cup-shaped items I whipped up on the lathe. After marking the proper locations, I cut holes through the splitter with a 1" hole saw. The cups are epoxied in from the bottom, with a separate aluminum washer glued in place over the top. This sandwiches the splitter without crushing it. The threaded rods are held in place with grade 8 nuts and (in some places) aircraft all-metal lock nuts. This makes it very easy to adjust the splitter angle, because the rods are not actually threaded into the cups, so they don't have to turn to make the adjustment, and can therefore be rigidly mounted to the front crash structure/core support/ whatever that big piece of aluminum is called.

Update: I've added a bit to the splitter.

Here's a pic of the original work. See the green arrow? That points to the bit I wasn't sure I liked. The corner sticking out looked a little bit unfinished to me.

Over the weekend, I added a "flip-up" to each end of the splitter (shown below by the red arrow). Still foam and carbon fiber (blue buoyancy foam this time). Sculpting the foam took quite a bit of time!

I think it finishes out the piece a bit better.

can you take some pics and explain teh mounting thingys in more detail?

Me want!

drmike, would you be interested in creating a splitter for a 2011 MCS?

Very nice Mike! I always enjoyed reading your posts & how-to's over on NAM/MA. Cool to see you here.

Look at the date.

DaveEstey wrote: Look at the date.

Oops! Didn't remember it from 2.5 years ago (still don't) and I usually see/read all of the MINI-related threads.