My Single Dutch Delight

[E12-535iTurbo]

The garage is a single, I am Dutch and the garage is my delight.
Therefore is this "My Single Dutch Delight"garage journal.

So about 1.5 year ago I came across this website and it sure has made an impact. I've always loved working on cars and my dream came true when we bought our first house with a small garage. It's about 8.5 meters long and 3 meters wide. Small but large enough to have one car inside and leave some room for a work bench. Cars have started it all but I generally love making things so that's what I do, and I have to say that the GJ did not help to tame the desire to make things.

The cars:
-1986 BMW E30 M-tech I coupe. Originally an 325i but I've converted it with a E36 S50B30 engine 286 bhp.
-1978 BMW E12 which was originally an 525 carb. It now has a E34 M30B35 engine with a Holset HX52 turbo. It's my major drive to build my garage as plans are continuously getting bigger and I want to do everything myself. So currently the plans are to build a integrated cage which means I need a lot of extra tools. Most I'll build myself.
-2003 E39 530D which is my daily driver.

On to the garage:
Before I knew about this forum (left and right end of the garage, the door goes to the rear garden):

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To get rid of some house stuff and liberate one of the three bedrooms upstairs from the wash machine I sacrificed this small corner. Made a closet.
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Ironically the cheapest can of paint was remarkably similar to the paint scheme Jack Olsen used in his garage. I don't want to make a clone so I converted to a different colour later on. Even though imitation is the highest form of flattery right? Which would be deserved in his case.

Anyway I needed to do something about that work bench. I made it with given materials and it just didn't work. So I started with a bought drawer cabinet and made a casing for it:

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Which at 200 euro's was freakin expensive. At work we had a stack of new drawers without a cabinet stored since 2007. The brand name is KIND which is a high quality brand. I was able to buy the stack for less then 20 euro's. Went home and to work on a cabinet:

I bought some square steel and flat panels. The side panels are hand formed since I don't have a press. I do have a small manual mill which I used for the slots. It's completely adjustable so if I need a different drawer configuration in the future I can do so. In total I'm less then 50 euro in.

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Next was the bench top. Wood is expensive so I went to a second hand shop where I bought to vintage coffee tables (together for around 90 euro's). Both are solid oak 7.5 centimetres thick.

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The wooden bench top is covered with a 2mm sheet of stainless:

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Made a grinder rack at the side:

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And a final overview of the improved bench:

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To the right you see my BF20 Chinese table top mill on the three legged table. It's three legged and bolted to the wall to be able to fit the MIG welder underneath.

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

So that's some history. On to the present....
Like I explained before, most of the drive for projects in the garage is my 535iTurbo. Which should have some insane power but lacks rigid body work to cope with this power. So a cage is needed to strengthen the body. I also have to children and a wife and I would like to enjoy this car when it ever gets finished. So a streetcar with a full cage is not practical which means I can't drive it daily which means less enjoyment. Unless.......... I build the cage to be sunken in the original body so the integrated cage project began to get shape.

Starting point is I want to build it myself.

So I need a bender, short radius but also large radius to follow the lines of the body. Those are expensive so let's see what's available: Gottrikes tube bender plans for the short radius bends and some HF modification set from SWAG.

Lets start with the large radius bends. HF isn't available here in Europe and most of the HF stuff get tossed in the SWAG kit any way so I just ordered the dies and drive axle from him. I'll build the rest myself. So I need to cut steel which can be done with a grinder but that's messy and not very accurate in this application. So I have a AC/DC TIG welder on my shopping list which often include a plasma torch too. So I went shopping and came to this 4 in 1 device: http://www.freetech-equipment.com/

The company is a Dutch single man operation who offshores the production work in China. I did some test welds etc. talked with other users and decided to buy one.

So now I can cut metal and began reading about plasma torches. These cut best with extremely dry feed air. So I need a dehumidifier for my compressor. I don't use a lot of air so I only have a cheap compressor. Which is extremely loud so I need to have an enclosure too. Oh wait since I don't use a lot of air and I have neighbours closely I should make something really really quite and a bit more economical so..... I should use a refrigerator compressor but sometimes I need to have a bit more flow so actually I should make something in an enclosure which can switch between the two and also includes some kind of cooler.

At that time I got a call from our production factory asking if I'd like to have some equipment parts before they bin it. And there happens to be a nice cooling block + valves + stainless lines + electronics etc. Perfect for this project!

So that's where I'm working on now: building the enclosed dual compressor dehumidifier.

Pneumatics:
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220V schematics:
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24V schematics:
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These are the current schematics. I need to finalize the exact pin-out for the electronics. But the box is actually getting quite close to be ready.

I'm quite pleased with the functionality. It has one three position switch to select which pump to run or to go to standby. Both pumps are equipped with hour counters. The air will be actively cooled by a fan in a five meter copper coil before going into an copper maze cooling block equipped with peltier coolers. The temperature is monitored with a PT100 with display. The switching happens with pneumatic ball valves. The pumps are stopped when max pressure is reached or the switch is in standby. When that happens a moisture trap is released from pressure and the auto drain is activated. Also the last active pump is released from pressure for a smooth start-up. The requested position (orange) and actual position (green) of the ball valves is assigned by LED's. When the drain is active a red LED is active.

See how things can move quite slow while I'm building my car.....
Powah -> Structural integrity -> Integrated cage -> Tube bender -> Plasma cutter -> Dry air

and the future:
The house is for sale at the moment and we're shopping for something new. One of the demands is a larger garage or room to build one. I've recently came across a great opportunity to be able to fill the potential larger garage:

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The deal is still to be closed but hopefully it will in a couple of weeks. What would make me a very very very happy man .

 

[1/2 Cup]

You have a great setup, well done, all that gear would make me extremely happy as well, the only trouble is I do not have the room to put it in.

All the best.

 

[bazzateer]

I have a friend nr Rotterdam who bought an old workshop with offices above. He converted the offices and now lives above his 12 car workshop!

Is he happy? Hell yeah!

If you cannot find a house with a big garage look for one with space to build.

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

You have a great setup, well done, all that gear would make me extremely happy as well, the only trouble is I do not have the room to put it in.

All the best.

Thanks! There is probably more gear in there then you think. I've used all nooks and crannies to store stuff.

I have a friend nr Rotterdam who bought an old workshop with offices above. He converted the offices and now lives above his 12 car workshop!

Is he happy? Hell yeah!

If you cannot find a house with a big garage look for one with space to build.

That would be the ultimate house but it would be hard to convince my wife that's what we need. My two children would just go with the flow.

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

Building a small aisle entrance gate

Last year I've promised my parents in law to build them a nice gate. They have large backyard with access through the side of the house. Their grandchildren tend to escape through this exit as they go on their exploring adventures. The current solution is of my parents in law is to put a large piece of wood or the rolling containers in place to keep them for escaping.

This is the aisle:
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Two designs I drew in AutoCad: We prefer the right one since it has a friendlier look to it. Also the up rising ends makes the gate visually more narrow and since the aisle looks already a bit narrow we would better not accentuate that and go for the right design.

There will also be small balls welded to the lower bars to make them a bit safer for our children if they by accident fall on top of them. I've added the lower bars to keep the dogs from my sister in law from escaping through the gate.
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One of the difficulties of this design is the two bend bars at the top. I don't have a roller bender so I'd though I'd make one since I'll be needing them for the cage of my BMW anyway. But while searching the internet I can across some guy that bends steel profiles cold over a jig. So I'd like to try that. The best radius is made with a router and not with a jigsaw, I borrowed one from my father and made a radius tool and mount for it. (Sadly it's no Festool or anything so no fancy options or attachments.)

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I had some particle board scraps from the compressor cabinet which I cut in the right angle and glued together to make the jig from and fit my desired radius.

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I bolted the jig to the floor of the garage and pulled the profiles over the jig.
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That left me with two identically bend profiles. Hard work but a great success! I bent them with the welding seam towards the jig (inner radius) to minimize impact on the weakest part of the tube. The radius came out within millimetres of how I had drawn the design in AutoCAD.

Rough fitment and layout of the gate:
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Time to practise my TIG welding:
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I love doing stuff like this. Learned a ton again and got reminded of some lessons. Like welding an hollow ball and blow-out during welding . I hope to be able to finish this in a few weeks so we can give it to them at their anniversary.

 

[Hostyle]

That's some nice work on the gate and the jig!

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

Sometimes it's a bit difficult to find decent welding positions. Makes me want to have a dedicated welding table. Dreams for the near future....

Not completely finished but getting close:

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I'm still missing some parts for the gate itself so I started on the wall mounted catch tube to which the gate will close. I don't want to crush the tube when bolting it to the wall so I drilled some holes and added pieces of pipe for support. The counter sunk them to make sure the screws will be flat with the tube surface.

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Since I could not move further forward with the gate I worked on the compressor cabinet a bit more. I also took some pictures:

This is with the lid off. The second pump will be in the bottom cabinet.

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On the right are the pneumatics I worked on yesterday. These are 24V controlled pneumatic valves that switch the pneumatic ball valves which are located in the main air lines. One to switch between the pumps (upper compartment) and two to unload the water drain (below the cabinet). They are the yellow things in the pictures.

The clutter of lines underneath the cabinet. These will all be covert with an aluminium face to which the switches and gauges will be mounted.

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Yesterday was also the day that I realized that this is must be the most over engineered time consuming project I ever did. It's just absolute idiotic. Time that I should have spend working on the car....

 

[1/2 Cup]

Absolutely fantastic, keep up the great work.

Regards

 

[Hostyle]

That's one hell of a compressor set-up. I like the idea of a fridge compressor. Do you have any idea how much air they pump out?

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

I've no idea how much flow they generate but it's quite low. I don't use much air tools (yet) so for me it's not an issue that the pump is running longer to fill the tank(s). If I need a faster fill I can always switch to the other compressor pump. But that is less economical and makes more noise.

 

[Hostyle]

Thanks for the explanation. I'm looking into a small compressor for some small jobs on and around the bikes, like doing the tyre pressure and drying after cleaning. I think I'll just buy a smaller compressor some day.

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

Let's start with the bad news: The mill and lathe were sold to someone else even though I just spoke with the seller etc. So that was a bummer.

Anyway let's focus on the positive: We sold our house and bought a new place. The garage will be slightly larger but we'll be allowed to expand to 75M^2. That won't happen in the near future but somewhere in the next few years. The house has to be done first.

Let's return to the gate.
I've added a simple locking mechanism and a catch pole to be mounted to the house:

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And added hinges and a carriage pole (I think TIG-welding is going quite well already):

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It is being treated at the moment: sandblasting, thermal sprayed and powder coated for maximal corrosion resistance. I hope to present it to my mother in law at her birthday party next weekend and if time allows install it too.

 

[Hostyle]

Those welds are sweet! Good job, and congrats on the house.

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

Finished the gate:

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And some close up's of the installation (back, left and front, right):

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Mother in law was happy. I'm happy to finally have that ticked off of my to-do list.

 

[zkling]

Nice shop and great job on the gate build.

 

[csp]

What are the pieces of the gate hinge that thread into the gate itself? Do you have a source for them pre-fabbed? Edit: I just noticed your location. I'll have to see what I can find from a supplier in the US.

I have a similar gate build in progress and have debating what to use for a hinge. I really like the simplicity in those.

Really nice work on it!

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

Nice shop and great job on the gate build.

Thanks!

What are the pieces of the gate hinge that thread into the gate itself? Do you have a source for them pre-fabbed? Edit: I just noticed your location. I'll have to see what I can find from a supplier in the US.

I have a similar gate build in progress and have debating what to use for a hinge. I really like the simplicity in those.

Really nice work on it!

Try to find something like this local to you: www.geran.nl/pdf/PDF_120_scharnier1.pdf

That is what I used. They were less than 6 euro's. Shipping was just as expensive as the two hinges.

 

[1/2 Cup]

Fantastic, you certainly don't have any issues with your TIG welding, well done.

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

Fantastic, you certainly don't have any issues with your TIG welding, well done.

Thanks! The gate is the first thing I welded after five year without a TIG. I'm not very experienced at all so it's nice to hear such positive feedback! There is certainly still a lot to learn but I guess the basics are there.

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

Only one more week to go and we'll have the keys to our new house. Basically it has a tandem garage with a wall in between to separate the two spaces.

I'll name it "My Double Dutch Delight" .

Garage front and back (3.5m wide, 6.0m long):
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Work shop font and back (Currently 2.6m wide, 6.75m long):
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The workshops roof is 3.5meters wide so if I move the garden side wall I'll gain some working surface.

I can't wait till it's next Wednesday! However I must warn you that this topic might turn into a house/garage renovation topic. There is lots to be done in the house as well.

 

[taumac]

That's gonna be a great garage and bonus little shop area. Surly looking forward to seeing how you outfit the space.

 

[azula]

Beautiful cars and space! Excellent welding too!

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

So we've been living in the house for a almost a month now. Most of our initial installation in the house is done already. By initial installation I mean that everything we use in daily life has it's place and all important rooms are painted an evenly white, the TV is hung, internet is available, clothes are in closets and the children can play safely everywhere. We're both back at work now and are thinking about which bigger project we will start first in or around the house.

So I've sneaked into the garage a few times to get started there. I need to post some pictures but computer time at home is equal to no project-progress. However I specifically tried to shoot some better pictures then the quick-shot pictures I posted before from my phone.

I've stripped the garage almost to bare wood/brick and painted most of the walls white. I first thought of installing a lowered ceiling but decided against that and will keep the beams in sight. I hope to be able to show you why with some pictures soon. Most of you will love it (I guess).

It will be my first project with my newly acquired tools (inspired by some members of this forum): TS55 REQ, OF1010, CLT-MIDI, LR32-sys and three Stabila friends. Investing so heavily in new tools does raise expectations right?

 

[Hostyle]

Yes it does, now get on with the pictures and the work!

Great to read that you and your family are settling in to the new home.

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

It's difficult to make good pictures when lightning is bad and you're in a small space without a wide angle camera. To top it off I still didn't upload the pictures from the camera to the laptop so all I have are some phone pictures. Sorry for that.

I started with the garage and left the workshop as a next project.

First I needed to put the E12 inside so I need to work around that.
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The goal for this place is to provide some storage out of the way and keep it as clean and bright as possible. So I started by stripping the walls and ceiling. I sold the automatic garage door opener yesterday because it's cluttering the ceiling. The steel tilting door has to go too. I'll replace it with wooden better insulating double doors.

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Next thing was to fill all the holes and paint the wall white:

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Like you can see in the pictures I'm working on the electronics at the moment. I voted against flush mounted sockets because they are inflexible and a lot of work to install. For the garage I found these raised sockets acceptable. They are actually meant for out door use so are sealed for fluids and dust.

Next will be installing the T8 (will replace them by LED) fixtures in two groups. One in the back and one in the front of the garage. Then some sheet rock and mudding around these. After that I'll completely paint the ceiling white. On both sides of the garage will be a storage rack mounted as high as possible with LED strips incorporated. I've 24 transparent containers that fit precisely between the beams of the ceiling so I'll be able to make optimal use of the ceiling height. Each shelve will have one 5m strip shining up at the boxes and ceiling with a bright cover and one shining down with a dispersive cover. These will be delivered today. They are 1100 Lumen/meter so with a total of 20 meter it should give me about 22000 for the entire garage. From what I've found surfing online I need about 1000-1500 lux for precision work. These LED strips should provide me with that at my usual working height.

I can't wait to see this finished and I hope it will turn out like I have it in my mind. However it progresses slowly with one three year old and his little brother being ten months old while we're both working 80-90% jobs.

 

[1/2 Cup]

Looking fantastic, keep up the great work.

 

[Hostyle]

Progress is progress! And so far it's looking great, lighting plans sound good too!

Anymore of the E12?

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

Looking fantastic, keep up the great work.

Thanks!

Progress is progress! And so far it's looking great, lighting plans sound good too!

Anymore of the E12?

Again thanks!

I had quite an documented build topic online but imageshark wanted to have my money for hosting my pictures so they went offline. Since I haven't had time to work on the car for the last two years I just accepted that there are no pictures online anymore.

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

I was really anxious to see the performance of the LED strips:

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On the left is the originally mounted glow bulb. On the right the LED strip both have similar wattage. This is one strip out of the future four. I'm happy!

One more just for my enjoyment:
View media item 53505Oh and I lost some clutter at the ceiling in the form of the electric door opener. Which should be picked-up tonight.

I'm rethinking if I'll use the T8 fixtures. I might just order two more LED strips which are much less work and less invasive concerning the limited amount of space I have.

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

I didn't work much on the garage the last week but am slowly progressing with the electronics. In the mean time I did random jobs in the house. Put some lights up and am working on getting the house safer for the kids. I'm putting in a gate at the first floor stairs, which is a nice opportunity to work with my newly acquired festools:

It's existing gate but needed to be made narrower. So I cut it to size and fixed the end post with dowels using a jig I made on my mill some time ago:

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A second interesting project is the boulder attic. I've been climbing for little bit over a year now on a weekly base but I'd like to go more often however with both our jobs and having two children it's simply not possible without disturbing the family/work/pleasure balance. So instead of going more often to the gym I thought I could build a boulder wall at home. I'm hoping to get the kids and perhaps my wife into climbing too.

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It's just the first panel about 4,5 by 4,5 feet. I currently have about 20 square meters of panels available but the attic is large enough for about 50-60 M^2. I'm sure I'll be able to build some interesting routes.

 

[Hostyle]

That's an awesome idea for your home gym

I'm going indoor climbing next saturday for the first time. We'll see how it goes. I guess I'll be sore by sunday

 

[Superbec]

Nice place you got there

Got a topic with the e30 build somewhere?

I'm getting a house with a workplace in December and I'm researching lighting , do you have a link for the led strips?

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

That's an awesome idea for your home gym

I'm going indoor climbing next saturday for the first time. We'll see how it goes. I guess I'll be sore by sunday

Cool! Where will you go climbing? Neoliet or Monk? I'm at Neoliet north or south every Tuesday evening.

Nice place you got there

Got a topic with the e30 build somewhere?

I'm getting a house with a workplace in December and I'm researching lighting , do you have a link for the led strips?

I bought them at: http://ledstrip-specialist.nl/

Sadly I lost the build topic of my E30. It's also in storage now and I first need to finish the house, the garage and my BMW E12 before I'll get back on the E30 for an ultimate super build finish .

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

It has been quiet over here but that doesn't mean no work has been done. I had a few minutes yesterday and tried to shoot a few pictures to show the progress but lighting is bad and I need to learn how to shoot pictures with our camera. It's Samsung NX100 which should be able to produce but when shooting in less then ideal circumstances (moving target/bad lighting/bad light color) it's not producing what I expect from it in the automatic setting.

I shot these yesterday by manually changing some parameters:

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It's a receiver left behind by the previous owner of the house. I thought I'd toss it but it turns out to be quite a nice receiver and of rather good quality in it's days. On top of that, it is period correct with the garage main inhabitant: my BMW E12. So it's staying and will get its place somewhere.

I'll try to get a few better pictures of the other projects I've been working on so keep posted. Since my first visit of this forum I got the habit to research the hell out of every project before commencing. So most of the building techniques of my projects are greatly inspired from others of this forum. Posting my progress is a way to give back to the community.

In an attempt to have you guys to revisit, I'll include some cliff-hangers:
-I finished the flooring trim in the bedrooms (using coping techniques, Thanks guys!)
-I produced a stack of parts for eight high quality garage cabinets made of 18mm Baltic birch plywood in BB-B quality. (Thanks Gregor!)
-Most sheets are up in the boulder attic.
-Finished the childrens gate at the first floor.
-Working on some saw horses (Thanks Koy E)
-There are 7 sheets of plywood left....

 

[Mwesterbrink]

Nice working space you have there, i live in the netherlands as well and i have a single aswell, do you have any plans for the garage with cabinets etc?

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

Finished the saw horses:

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...and learned you can make mistakes and fix them. Even with wood.

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A few weeks ago I got the chance to use the equipment of a professional wood working shop for a day to work on my garage cabinets. Inspired by Gregor I placed an order for 18mm Baltic birch plywood in BB-B quality. For both the garage and the workshop I strive for a relaxing and clear atmosphere. I go there to work on projects and clear my mind from the busy hours at work and family. So the theme I'm aiming at is natural wood with white and clear blue accents.

We only had about 6 hours to get stuff done. In the end of the day I ended up with these stacks:
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We pretty much got everything done: cleats, doors, sides, backing, top, bottom. Everything predrilled, biscuited, dadoed etc.

Yesterday I took a few minutes and made a start of checking the quality of our labour. I only got around to check the sides of the cabinets for equality in length, width and squareness by making a nice stack aligned at two sides of all the sheets and then putting a ruler against the unaligned side of the stack.

The stack of cabinet sides:
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Width:
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Height:
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I came to the conclusion that something must have been wandering on the machine. Squareness is spot-on, width is also spot on but height has some variance. Highest to lowest are off with about 2.5mm so that's +/-1.25mm. The down side is that I can not trim the highs because they were used as a reference for line boring the shelve pin-holes and for the biscuit joints.

The only thing I can do is accept it and make matching sets. They will be hanged in one row of three cabinets at the far end of the workshop and a row of five at the left wall. I'll be checking the other cuts somewhere within the next few days. Most important will be the doors, because they will be the most seen parts.

I'm really curious to the end result. Most likely nobody will notice and after all these are just stupidly overbuilt garage cabinets and practice for inside the house.

 

[Bib Overalls]

Did you make that deal on the Hembrug Ergonomic Lathe and the Deckel FP4M Universal Mill? Both machines are highly regarded and well suited for use in a hobbyist's home shop. I've been looking for a good lathe at a reasonable price and around here they don't exist.

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

Did you make that deal on the Hembrug Ergonomic Lathe and the Deckel FP4M Universal Mill? Both machines are highly regarded and well suited for use in a hobbyist's home shop. I've been looking for a good lathe at a reasonable price and around here they don't exist.

Sadly no. I'm still upset about it. They sold it to a merchant that said he would not buy the other machines if he could not buy those two as well. I got to see the receipt and I would have paid a higher price than he did. He made the deal of the century.
-2x Deckel FP4M Universal Mill
-2x Hembrug Ergonomic Lathe
-aciera CNC mill
-drill press
-all accessories + cabinets
-many other bits and pieces

All for 33k. A single Deckel FP4M goes for 20-25k here.

They made and signed an agreement while I was suppose to meet them a day later. I called what time they needed me to be there and they told me it was sold.

I'm slowly getting over it but I'm not running into nice deals on machines like these every day. I'm not really searching at the moment. Since I've got my work cut out for me but a nice small lathe would make me really happy.

 

[vegar]

I am impressed with your skill at the TIG. Big thumbs up

I shot these yesterday by manually changing some parameters:

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It's a receiver left behind by the previous owner of the house. I thought I'd toss it but it turns out to be quite a nice receiver and of rather good quality in it's days. On top of that, it is period correct with the garage main inhabitant: my BMW E12. So it's staying and will get its place somewhere.

Thats a nice reciver. I have a Tandberg Sølvsuper 12 with matching speakers at the loft in the garage, maybe I should take it down and put it back in to action