Focal Beryllium BMW

i have just spent the last 2 hours of work time reading this thread. im amazed. looks awesome.    what is your trade ? is this just a hobby ?

i know its a long shot for a reply but where did you buy that 5mm copper tube?

Hey whats up... Mad skills man mad skills!!!!!!! i have seen some high dollar installs on some cars and some hella good custom stuff but this takes the cake... but then again this is your baby if i had the time and skills and patience hell i would try doin stuff to mine but for now she remains mostly stock nothin special... so is there an update to the ICE or any thing else with your ride?????????Jayce

Hey Robo, Sorry I have been off the forums for many months, the end product is a work of art to be remembered... I hope you know we appreciate the flood of pictures and commentary. I look forward to seeing your future projects, and thanks again for taking the time to reply.I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.

When you do not know what you are doing and what you are doing is the best -- that is inspiration.

A few pages before, you could see I was working on the backside of the front seat. I pumped that thing with some polyester and filler.

Now the time has come to finish this off…I covered that seatcover with a layer of carbon fibre. And ‘cause I really don’t like big things in carbon fibre, I styled the little net on the backside …I adjusted the frame onto the form of the carbon plate, and made it a bit wider.You can also see that I painted it silver, like the rest of the moldings inside the car. So it all takes part in one total package, and I get a nice contrast between the silver and the black carbon fibre.

To screw this thing tight, I use a bit thicker hold-screws.

Another piece I made, and this will get on the top of the back-rest.

On the rear, I made a sloth, where a neon will be added. This is also the reason I painted it white.

Here a picture of how it’ll look when mounted in the car.

These polyester covers I made to cover up the pedals, so I can’t damage them.

These are in primer, and must get to the painter soon, also they need to be provided with some rubber.

I mounted the pedals, who were finished some time ago, in the car.

The covers, I sprayed in silver, cause everything else in the car is in silver.I taped a little rubber on there too.Here the rest of the pedals.

Again, this is something that took a lot of work to make. But when I take a good look at these things, I don't care about the time and work.

About the letters... next winter I will take out that carbon plate, and put an ever smaller sticker on there.Since this is underneath the layers of clear-coat, I'll have to rubb till those are gone...

I had some rubbish laying around to make something out of. The carbon dustcovers who are behind the wheels, were never completely finished in my opinion. I mean, it was just “plain” and nothing special. Now I was able to put some more time and effort into it, and started milling some aluminum from 3mm thick. First I made a round disc of MDF, pasted the aluminum on it, and milled out the 4 plates.

Offcourse this was childsplay, but then we stepped up a level. The meaning is to make a little frame around the carbon, on the outerside from the disc.

This may not be too wide, so it wouldn’t look to plumb.Once this was all drawn out on the aluminum, we could get started.

The outer border is 7mm thick. The dangereous part is, that it could bend from the heat, or that the mill would cut in. But I thought about this long, and used a lot of WD40, and also I milled away a half mm per time.

Here they are, and it all worked out very well, although some polishing will be necessary.

This one is already abraded and polished.

This time I didn’t do the polishing by machine, just because I didn’t think it would come to a good end. Much do dangereous so hold this to a brush.

So I did it by hand, but offcourse, you don’t get the same result as by machine polishing.But they shine a bit

I managed to find a way to polish those tiny alu rings with the machine.

This is the little plank of MDF I used to mill them.On the outside I screwed a little slat that sticks out a few mm's

Made some more little plates.

Here you can see how tight it is, and it can't slide or shift somewhere.

The 5 plates are holding the piece down.

Offcourse I taped some "mush?" on the plates, so I didn't scratch the aluminum.

Instead of keeping it against the polishingmachine, I chose to do it with the drillingmachine, and this worked a little bit better as usual.

Once this was done, I had to screw the piece loose, and slide the piece a bit.

So I could reach the 5 places where the plates were, too.

This was the result, and you can never accomplish this by doing it by hand.

Here a familiy picture.

The aluminium bar that lays on the sanding block, I used to abrade the roundings on the inside. Just turned some sanding paper around it.

I get a lot of questions about how many time I put in to these things. Well, this is the first time I kept track of time.

I worked on these rings 26 hours.and then I mean:Drawing outMill the MDFSaw out the aluminum, milling, and ...a lot of millinga little bit of "filing"abrading and a lot of abrading.cleaning and polishingquickly making a set of 4 rings, LOL

As you may have read, I replaced the PPI amplifier by 2 JL Audio’s. Here’s a picture of how I worked-in the PPI in the aluminum box.

The alu cover and the plexi will stay like they were. The carbon fibre, and the aluminum with the vents will be replaced.

These are the JL’s who traded places with the PPI.

You may also remember that I wanted to work-in a logo between the amp.Well, now that the box is back on my working table, that’s the next thing I will be working on this couple of weeks. So you could say: we’re going back to the ICE age, o yeah!I realised quickly that if I remade this box, it had to look more beautifull and way more cooler then how it was with the PPI.I did some thinking , and thought on something I once made…A couple years back, I made “CONES” to put speakers in. Back then I found that so cool, that I said: “these things I’ll make again sometime”;So… PARTYTME !The meaning of this is that I’m going to work-in the JL logo between the amplifiers.This is the first thing I made, so we call it EVO1.First I made a little MDF ring where the logo should be, and I milled all the rest afterwards.

Once I had this, I glued it all on each other, and put a spar with an M4 through it, and screwed it all tight.

Put this in the drilling machine.

Let the drilling machine spin, and held a sanding Block against it.

So I could abrade it all smoothly, and this was the result.

A cone, nothing more, nothing less. :worthless: :worthless: :worthless:

The model looked like doodie, and when I held the sanding Block against it, I pushed it all a bit out of center.So the cone did end up in de bin.EVO2 is coming up, with more shapes.

Time for EVO 2

First of all, I put everything on paper First. Drawed it all out how I wanted it, with some more pretty roundings in it.

After that I milled some discs, and glued them on each other, and put in an M5 shaft.Placed it all in the drilling machine, and put a little plank underneath. If you look closely you see a hole of 5mm in the plank

Placed the drill below, and the little shaft is now in the hole. I did this so the MDF Block won’t be able to swing out of it’s axis.

Once this was placed properly, I screwed the drill tight, so it couldn’t get any higher or lower anymore.

Started with the abrading proces again, and this time I didn’t use a sanding Block.

This model looks a lot better

Then I knocked in the front little disc with 3 little nails. This little disc also has a small side where the logo falls in.

Abraded it all

Then I took away the last ring, and used the “klockdrill” to empty the inside;

Once I saw I was almost at the limit, I glued the final ring back on there.

Every time I replaced the drill by a smaller one, and extracted layer by layer.

If you see how I’ve done this, you must be sure you don’t drill too far, or you’ll have a hole in your hand.

The whole family