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Old 05-19-2017, 08:36 AM
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continued from above



We discussed options with the owner and the marked up image (above right) of modified OEM door panels was deemed the right way to go. This allowed us to keep the upper curved plastic section of the factory door panel, which has the inside door handle, a speaker hole, and the upper wiper seals and felts for the door glass. Ryan carefully removed the lower section of the panel, which was plastic riveted to the upper section.



In the images above you can see the detail on the plastic rivets which fastened the two plastic panels together. Once those were cut out he made a cardboard template for the lower section, test fit that to the cage, then transferred the templates to aluminum sheet. These will make for "almost flat" panels, which will gain several inches of width for the cage door bars (removing the "pull" handle and outer arm rest).




With the two aluminum panels cut they were then split along a curved front edge, which would need to be fitted to a curved section of the upper plastic section of the OEM door panel. This gap was filled with more aluminum sheet, then he secured it to the door panel with Clecos and tack welded the pieces together (see below left).



The split sections were fully TIG welded off the car, then the seams were sanded, filled with metal as needed, and shaped for a nice appearance (see above right). The Optima series has car show portions that we cannot ignore, so this work was for those all important "Design & Engineering Points".



The end result adds some necessary protection between the driver's arm and the sharp inner workings of the window glass. It looks good so it should help in the Optima D&E judging, too. We might go back and upholster these aluminum panels, or coat/anodize them in some way. For now we had the clearance needed to get the door bars as far away from the driver's arm while keeping the door windows operational.

FRONT SUBFRAME REINFORCEMENT + SPINDLES REFRESHED

Due to the high torque loads from the 7.7L engine we are building for this car we decided it was worthwhile to reinforce the front subframe while the car was being built. When we are building a car to this level there are very few areas that are "just left stock". The factory front subframe was dropped out of the car and bead blasted down to bare steel.



Once we received the subframe back we inspected it closely for cracks, bent flanges, and any other potential damage. This came out of a Texas car so there were no traces of rust or corrosion, and luckily the motor mount sections weren't cracked. This meant we had a good core to start with.



The factory M3 subframe is a welded steel assembly from a number of stampings, but the factory misses a few spots when they put them together, so those were fully welded by our crew.



They also TIG welded in some reinforcement plates to the underside of the motor mount plate, then a second plate was welded in from underneath to "box" in the bottom of this section. We use one of these mounting holes for our LS swap mounts, so we wanted that as strong as possible. Even the subframe mounting holes were seam welded at both ends, to fill in "skipped" sections from the factory.

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