Possible new route to 5 stud front suspension

[Turbo-Brown]

Rally Design supply a kit with the same disc and calipers for a reasonable price:

https://www.rallydesign.co.uk/product_i ... s_id=15226

Ready to bolt on

Sure a friendly local machine shop would add some cosmetic details for not too much money after that.

Only reason I'm doing all this is because I want to have proper E30 geometry with five lug without the cost of M3 bits....my bespoke setup will still run to a good £500 plus a huge amount of time though.

[steve_k]

Rally Design supply a kit with the same disc and calipers for a reasonable price:

https://www.rallydesign.co.uk/product_i ... s_id=15226

Ready to bolt on

Sure a friendly local machine shop would add some cosmetic details for not too much money after that.

Only reason I'm doing all this is because I want to have proper E30 geometry with five lug without the cost of M3 bits....my bespoke setup will still run to a good £500 plus a huge amount of time though.

thanks for that buddy, i'll have a look at those hats & go from there.

[Turbo-Brown]

If you buy just the hats from Rally Design, you have to get them machined just to fit the disc as they're oversized all round!

With a kit, it should just bolt on

Got these both to the same state now! Might be tempted to put the little retaining screw on though!

[Acox99]

It may be a silly question, but why couldn’t a standard E30 4 lug hub be re drilled to 5 lug or drawn and CNC machines with 5 lugs? It’s a great job you’ve done, just seems a lot of effort

[Turbo-Brown]

Not a silly question at all!

Unfortunately the E30 hub can't be drilled for 5x120 as the bolt patterns overlap, think this is why you don't see simple adapter plates.

The standard hub is too small for 5x120 as well.

I looked at custom hubs but you can't buy off the shelf bearings to fit the E30 spindle so you would need to make adapter sleeves for the spindle and by the time you've done all that, you might as well have just made adapter sleeves for an E36 hub.

I made a set of sleeves years ago, but it all looks so flimsy.

You can go the E36 M3 route, but that's expensive and the geometry has question marks hanging over it plus all the OE stuff is quite heavy too.

So I delved into this rabbit hole!
It is a lot of effort for sure, but it satisfies my curiosity and should give perfect E30 geometry too.

[Turbo-Brown]

Managed to get one of the caliper brackets completed, then the machine started playing up so currently trying to resolve that!

How do you like the splash guard

[martauto]

Nice bit of machine work
What control system does it use and how do you generate the cutter paths ?

Mart.

[Turbo-Brown]

I use one of these, called a DDCSV3.1

Quite a remarkable bit of kit considering the cost which was about 200 quid.

Machine had Chinese closed loop stepper motors, although I'm not so super happy with them.

For tool paths I use Fusion 360.

[martauto]

New to me is that but very useful.

Mart.

[Turbo-Brown]

It's got it's limitations, no motor feedback to the controller and can't do rigid tapping, but aside from that, it's amazing!

[Turbo-Brown]

Woo! Progress!

[Turbo-Brown]

Couldn't help cutting some more this evening!

[Turbo-Brown]

Doesn't look much different, but took another 10mm off yesterday

[martauto]

Great progress mate, do you cut this dry ?

Mart.

[Turbo-Brown]

Devil's in the details, took ages to run fillets around the pockets today!

Got flood coolant rigged up, hence the ducky shower curtain

[Turbo-Brown]

Wonder if the E90 and E30 have the same ABS pulses per revolution of the wheel

[Turbo-Brown]

Good progress today, minor mishap when a tool flew apart though!

[Turbo-Brown]

Just need to tap two holes and this side is done!

[Turbo-Brown]

Edging closer to finishing!

Machining is a fantastic waste of material! And when you pay a machinist, they use even more material to speed up the process!!

[Turbo-Brown]

Made a prototype strut socket so I can check ride height.
Just need to get some old scrap tyre fitted to a wheel and see how it sits.
There's a jack under the end of the TCA in the pics above, suspension is supporting the weight of the car!
Quite springy which is surprising given the weight difference between E30 and E90!

[chatstar123]

Those disks look big. What size wheels are you going to fit?

[Turbo-Brown]

They're 310mm discs. Really wanted to fit the 325mm discs from an E46 but they just fouled everything

Got an old tyre fitted to a wheel today.
205/40R17 on a 8J17 ET20 wheel is a tiny bit of a stretch but I'm confident it won't rub anything.

Will go wider on the rear.

Will need something like a 40 or 50mm drop at the front, there's about 90mm from the top of the tyre to the arch at the moment.

So happy to see it sit on its new suspension though!

Think the design is fundamentally correct, just needs a great big drop! Travel on the E90 strut is wild too!