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Originally Posted by onebluemcm
Woah, man, first off, welcome to the forum. Second, if you haven't already, you need to post up some kind of documentary on what you've done with your car. Major work there! Definitely worth a run down of how it went, weight loss or not. That back area look great, very well finished and professional looking. How did you tie the console in - that would be my biggest question. Excellent work, all structural and weight talk aside.
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The thought that the bulkhead was left over from the roadster is an intersting one, I'm not sure it's a legitimate one. I'd like to hear from a BMW engineer on that one. On one hand, I can see the company leaving it for the reason of not having to deal with removal and an entirely different interior design, bulk-head forward (IIRC, the coupe and roadster interiors from the bulk head forward are very similar, no?). On the other hand, I thought the coupe was structurally a different design than the roadster (can't claim to know the details though....) so if it's a different design, why wouldn't they remove the bulkhead if they could?
All I know is that on the Z4MC race car that our friend had, they left the bulkhead and built the cage integral with it. I don't know why they didn't do it like in the white coupe above - seems like that might have been easier - however, we did have to deal with the oil sump being back there. The rear compartment on his Z4MC was a bit more open and accessible. And.....we know that with out all the extreme cross bracing that the cage held up in a total loss wreck...which leads me to believe that the builder of the race car believed that the bulkhead had a definite purpose in the structure of the car with a cage and in a race application.
All that said, sure would be a different animal with out the bulkhead - sort of Corvette-esque being able to reach into the rear compartment from a front seat.
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Thanks! This forum has been a great wealth of information, lots of great people on here.
I have been meaning to keep a log of all my modifications but never really got round to it. I will have to get something going though. I'll try to take some more pictures of the car so at least you can get some idea of how things were done in terms of the console area.
As I said I checked with two shops and they both said the same thing, so I believed them. But in truth, is it weaker? Possibly. It is noticeably weaker? Did it affect the performance? From what I have noticed, not in the slightest!