Fiona: A 1975 2002

[montgomery]

Looks amazing I love the meaty tire. Please never do 17's

[TinkWithanR]

It's not that I want to use 17s, but the 265 Kumho's I have now are already discontinued. Unless another manufacturer steps up and makes a wide 16" I won't have a choice.

[Welfare]

noooo, no updates.
what am i going to do for the rest of the day....

[BrandonMcKiernan]

dude. holy crap. amazing work. your fab skills are ridiculous. been a while since an update. hopefully still gettin work done. cant wait to see whats next

[TinkWithanR]

gg, sorry guys. I wish I could come in here and dump a whole bunch of gratuitous fabrication porn and updates worthy of your admiration, but that just isn't the case. I have been making slow progress in a few area's, but overall there really isn't anything to show for it yet.

However, that leads me into some news that you will hopefully enjoy. For the past month my old roommate and myself (along with a few of our friends) have been getting back into making short films/stories. During this time I brought up the idea of making a kind of video documentary of the build and progress that goes along with it. We both agreed that it would be a fun thing to tackle.

So before the end of the year you can expect a new kind of update. For those that still like the old updates, I'll keep up with them (pictures and explanations), but I will also take the time to make a 2-5 minutes film about the progress that has been made, along with the though process behind things. Oh, and lots of cool in process shots of course.


Last but hopefully not least, I realize I don't deserve much from you guys which how I've neglected you these past few months. That being said here is the latest short film we finished.

http://youtu.be/wgJjqAhvAao

We entered into a video contest, and one of the ways to win is popular vote. So please watch it, if you like it we would really appreciate it if you could vote for us. First place receives a really trick RED camera system, but even 5th place gets something, so every vote helps! And you can be assured that anything I win will be going to working on the car lol.

Here is the link to vote: http://shar.es/DQto4



Thanks again guys!

[TinkWithanR]

No progress on the car this week, I've been fabricating some equipment for the shop (to use on the car!). I did want to share two things though.

First up, I made a facebook page for my "company" Tinker Engineering. For the time being it's mostly just a profile on my shop and personal projects that I have going on right now. In due time I'd like to develop a number of things for BMW's and Subaru's to offer to the public as well as service and modifications for vehicles.

https://www.facebook.com/TinkerEngineering

Second, while I was browsing though my normal automotive forums I got a pretty big surprise. I've followed the posts on Build-Threads.com for a few years now, and I love going there to see the crazy stuff that comes out of Norway/Sweden/Finland etc (I think it must be something in the water up there). Low and behold the latest blog he featured was my little build! At first I didn't even realize it was mine lol, took a minute to sink in. You can find it here:

http://www.build-threads.com/build-threads/1975-bmw-2002/

Pretty cool that Fiona's story/progress is getting out in the world. She's had a long journey so far, but there's still a ways to go.

[TinkWithanR]

Got a little bit of progress to report from tonight. (Still working on the video update, but it should be good when it's done).

I finally took the time to reassemble the wheels (un-refurbished ATM, I figured this way I won't mess up a newly painted wheel with all the test fitting) and mount the tires on them. Originally I was going to take pictures of the process, but working alone it was all I could manage to get the damn things on the wheels. After an hour and a half of hand to hand combat I got it done. Funny enough the first wheel took and hour, once I got the hang of it the rest of them went together fairly quickly.

With the wheels and tires mounted and filled with air they could finally do the job they were born for, holding up the car. Well, the front wheels that is, the rear ones still need some kind of suspension to attach to, more on that later. So I threw the front wheels on the coilovers for the first time and set her down. And WOW, she was low. So low that I couldn't get the low-pro jack out from under the front subframe (~2.5 high). At first I was just going to put some 2x4's under the front wheels to get the jack out, but then I remembered that it had coilovers. So you can raise it. Duh. So after some tweaking of spring perches I found a somewhat happy height. It's still seems a bit lower than I was planning, but it's really hard to say until I get the front fenders cut and mount the flares up there to match the rear. I may end up making some upper strut mount spacers, it all depends on where the shock is sitting in it's range of travel with my desired ride height.

I also threw the rear wheel in the fender with the rear supported at where I think it will end up. So this should be roughly what the final ride height will look like (sorry for the crappy phone pics, left the dslr at home on accident):








Notice how tucked in the rear wheel is the the fender and body. I will probably have to do some more trimming on the inside, but I really like how that looks in this picture. With as big as the tires are, I don't want it to seem like an old school muscle car dragster with a lot of rake or anything like that.






More to come in the next few days. Thanks for looking!

[99sil-teg]

Love seeing updates one this, never disappoints

[montgomery]

One of my favorite builds. Can't wait for more.

[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!

[Chasen88]

Man GREAT build thread !

[parttimeprojectionist]

. 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.

unless you left foot brake

your right the turbo air dam isnt wide enuff

have you considered pig cheeks or perhaps a zender style kit.
personally i think most all of those options dont really do the 02 justice in the looks dept. the pigcheeks are by far the best looking of those but they need a custom airdam to look right
with your aptitiude for fabrication im suprised you havent gone the custom route

either way this will be a solid 02, one of my favorite builds going on right now!

[Minicharger]

Just.. Wow...

[Zacne_4]

As someone already said above.

Those meaty tires are sexy!

[99sil-teg]

Love all the custom work on this and those are some monster tires on there haha. Can't wait to see more progress