I still need to resolve the control arm situation but I made some progress on the flares. I decided to rotate the flares forward to try and direct air off of the tires
I still need to resolve the control arm situation but I made some progress on the flares. I decided to rotate the flares forward to try and direct air off of the tires
Over the weekend with tons of time on my hands I decided to redesign the hood extractor. When I was at VIR a couple months ago the air coming through the bumper opening was enough to cause the hood to bow up about an inch which shows just how much air and resistance this design was creating. To reduce drag I decided to close the bumper opening, cut a hole in the bottom of the car and built a front mounted diffuser so the hood could pull air from underneath the car (the splitter in not installed in these pictures). If only there was a track to test this out on... Its hard to tell from the photo but air would flow to the hood from the other side of the curved aluminum piece. I probably need to install a plate over the front of the bumper to hide the curve piece since air cannot escape into the hood or anywhere else
I finally got the flares back from the wrap shop, they turned out great. I also fab'ed up some louvers to cover the hood vent. I'm sending it to the wrap shop this week, These guys are going to hate me, I'm going to try and get them to match the numbering and tear drop thats below the louver.
Its all starting to come together! The suspension arms extensions are complete (this was a bit of a pain to get right and the sway bar linkage is still questionable) and the hood and wheel well vents have been wrapped
Here's everything I did to extended the suspension on the front of the car.
-Extended control arms using longer collars and hardware on the already adjustable control arm
-Installed rear toe arms (which are longer than tierods) on the front to replace and extend the tierods. These needed to be extended even more with adjustable end links
-Since the suspension arms are longer the strut also needed to be extended, I drilled new holes in the strut and raised it in the hub
-Moved the strut mounts out by drilling and grinding a spot for them into the chassis
-modify strut bearing to fit in it's new location
-Installed adjustable toe links
-installed spacers on the swaybar linkage and extend hardware
-cut fenders and install flares
The governor just lifted the state inspection requirement so look who now has a street car! It attracted a little too much attention to be an enjoyable drive and its loud as hell but it was still great to get it out. With the exhaust on (which doesn't do much) the in-cabin air filter is deafening. I guess I've never heard it without a helmet on. Its incredible how much air engines take in.
:cheers:
I bet that rubbing with some Goof Off will take off the black tire marks--unless 
your're keeping them on purpose
Wow, the wrap shop did a great job on those hood louvers.
Looks like it's hilarious on the street!
nderwater said:I bet that rubbing with some Goof Off will take off the black tire marks--unless
Oh I'm keeping them! I earned these stripes haha.
I remember when I ruined this fender it was completely collapsed, I bought a 20 piece metal working set so I could carefully knock the dent back out. About 20 minutes into it I had the fender upside down in the grass taking full swings with back side of an axe. Shockingly it kinda worked (in an incredibly low standards kinda way)
In reply to Box4VIR :
Nice racing stripes! I have them on my race car too :)
Maybe not worth a post but why not. To prepare for driving the car on the street last Sunday I decided to ditch the straight pipe and install a muffler. Unfortunately aftermarket Porsche exhausts are absurdly expensive so I rolled the dice and bought a pair of $30 generic mufflers from Amazon. You can see the old setup vs the new setup below, all I had to do was make some cuts, hammer the exhaust on and then install pop-rivets to ensure it stays on (not the best approach but I think it will work). I still need to level the exhaust which will be easy upstream where the exhaust bolts to the headers.
Tell me more about the Virginia governor suspending state safety inspections? I can't find any news of it on the Google but wouldn't hate taking my E36 M3 out for some miles.
Brake_L8 (Forum Supporter) said:Tell me more about the Virginia governor suspending state safety inspections? I can't find any news of it on the Google but wouldn't hate taking my E36 M3 out for some miles.
link is below, you should get classic tags on your e36 (no inspection required). What year is it?
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbc12.com/2020/03/20/gov-northam-directs-state-police-suspend-citing-expired-inspections/%3foutputType=amp
Box4VIR said:Brake_L8 (Forum Supporter) said:Tell me more about the Virginia governor suspending state safety inspections? I can't find any news of it on the Google but wouldn't hate taking my E36 M3 out for some miles.
link is below, you should get classic tags on your e36 (no inspection required). What year is it?
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbc12.com/2020/03/20/gov-northam-directs-state-police-suspend-citing-expired-inspections/%3foutputType=amp
Thanks! It's a '97 so not sure I can do classic tags yet. Think it has to be 25+ years old and we aren't quite there.
In reply to Brake_L8 (Forum Supporter) :
Yep it sure is. Damn. Mine is also a 97, only a couple more years we're almost there. That being said it really isn't a lot of fun driving a track car on the street, it attracts way too much attention. It could be fun to take to cars and coffee though.
spandak said:I'm a little rusty but if I remember my engineering right; I would not. The forces in the original design move along the lines of the control arm and essentially intersect at the ball joint. That's optimal. By moving the ball joint out like that the forces intersect at the spacer you made and now the distance between that point and the ballpoint is the length of the lever that's going to try and bend that spacer. If I'm wrong someone please correct me but my understanding says that is not ideal. It might be strong enough but in theory it's not the "right" way to do it.
That seems like good assumption, also consider the forces are now passing through the spacer which has a much smaller cross sectional area and is a less forgiving material (if its aluminum?) in respect to fatigue life.
engiekev said:spandak said:I'm a little rusty but if I remember my engineering right; I would not. The forces in the original design move along the lines of the control arm and essentially intersect at the ball joint. That's optimal. By moving the ball joint out like that the forces intersect at the spacer you made and now the distance between that point and the ballpoint is the length of the lever that's going to try and bend that spacer. If I'm wrong someone please correct me but my understanding says that is not ideal. It might be strong enough but in theory it's not the "right" way to do it.
That seems like good assumption, also consider the forces are now passing through the spacer which has a much smaller cross sectional area and is a less forgiving material (if its aluminum?) in respect to fatigue life.
Fortunetly it's not aluminum. Since I lengthened all the suspension arms and didn't change any of the geometry would would the forces change? Generally interested, I don't know. Also wouldn't the forces only be tension and compression?
edit: I'm worried about this so would really like some input. I really appreciate all of it
Box4VIR said:engiekev said:spandak said:I'm a little rusty but if I remember my engineering right; I would not. The forces in the original design move along the lines of the control arm and essentially intersect at the ball joint. That's optimal. By moving the ball joint out like that the forces intersect at the spacer you made and now the distance between that point and the ballpoint is the length of the lever that's going to try and bend that spacer. If I'm wrong someone please correct me but my understanding says that is not ideal. It might be strong enough but in theory it's not the "right" way to do it.
That seems like good assumption, also consider the forces are now passing through the spacer which has a much smaller cross sectional area and is a less forgiving material (if its aluminum?) in respect to fatigue life.
Fortunetly it's not aluminum. Since I lengthened all the suspension arms and didn't change any of the geometry would would the forces change? Generally interested, I don't know. Also wouldn't the forces only be tension and compression?
edit: I'm worried about this so would really like some input. I really appreciate all of it
Taking a rough stab at it, like Spandak said since the lever arm length is increased the force on the ball joint will be higher. The spacer and ball joint arm will be in bending so tension and compression on top and bottom areas, bending stress is dependent on cross sectional area. So with using a spacer the cross sectional area decreases at that point, stress goes up, and increased lever arm length lead to higher stresses in the whole joint compared to without the spacer.
Without modeling and performing FEA (since it's a complex geometry) it's hard to say the exact difference. If you did that you could calculate a difference in terms of percent between the two designs.
engiekev said:Taking a rough stab at it, like Spandak said since the lever arm length is increased the force on the ball joint will be higher.
That's not what he said and that's not true. Assuming that the force at the tire is the same (that might be a big assumption but if track width is the only thing that changed I don't think it's completely unreasonable) Increasing the lever arm of both the tire contact patch and the lateral link reduces the reaction force at the lateral link mount, and therefore reduces the reaction force at the inner ball joint as well. Reduced enough that the sleeve is strong enough to withstand it? Not sure about that, you'd need real numbers on the loads the parts are seeing to do that math. As far as axial loading (which I think is what spandak was referring to) it's certainly not as efficient of a design as the original part, but my guess is the steel sleeve is hefty enough to hold up as long as there's plenty of thread engagement.
Edit: I'd probably be more concerned about the sway bar link extension. But the penalty for that failing is a lot less than the control arm...
nderwater said:I bet that rubbing with some Goof Off will take off the black tire marks--unless
On the factory Porsche cars like the 919s from LM, Porsche clear coats over the rubber marks. I love it.
I'm still checking on the control arm design but I think its clear the sway bar extension is not going to work. My plan is to make a 2"x2"x3" aluminum block to replace the existing spacer. My plan is to pass two bolts through the spacer with ony bolts that extends through the end link (the idea is below). What do you guys think, will this be a better design?
Also I threw the 911 wheels on the car (including the 12" wide rears, which now fit ) and took the car out on an extended test drive. Seems to drive great and no red flags yet.
I imagine that solution would be strong enough, but the extra moment arm there might do some weird things to the bar's performance. Long term I'd probably think about either widening that bar or getting a modular nascar style bar that you can make the right length.
dps214 said:I imagine that solution would be strong enough, but the extra moment arm there might do some weird things to the bar's performance. Long term I'd probably think about either widening that bar or getting a modular nascar style bar that you can make the right length.
Thanks for your reply. I would like to get a wider bar but I'm on a grassroots budget. Maybe I'm looking at this incorrectly but I don't think the spacer will increase the leverage on the bar (or at least increase it in a direction that will effect performance). Leverage, I believe, is gained/lost in the perpendicular direction of the spacer.
Some of the force is going to go into twisting the arm of the sway bar, rather than just pulling on it and twisting the middle section. Realistically probably a pretty small effect, but worth noting. Like I said, something to consider on a more long term basis.
dps214 said:Some of the force is going to go into twisting the arm of the sway bar, rather than just pulling on it and twisting the middle section. Realistically probably a pretty small effect, but worth noting. Like I said, something to consider on a more long term basis.
Ah ok. Ya I agree with this. I have a feeling overtime I'm going to have to remake most of these parts
One more small step in the right direction, I got the sway bar spacers made which was super simple (especially compared to what you guys are doing on here). Unfortunately I didn't have the tools to do the job so I headed over to the Sim Seats shop which a buddy of mine owns. If you all aren't familiar with Sim Seats they make and sell high end custom racing simulators and have of course been killing it lately. They have sold kits to several NASCAR drivers and other professional drivers and have kits all the up to 6 figures (and more reasonable kits). The one shown below is the base model.
Happy Friday
:cheers:
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