I needed a tow bar on the car to tow the boat with. BMW said they do not make a tow bar for this model and after some enquiry decided to have one made somewhere is just a rip off. One of the places I visited was such a gummy place I was actually relieved that the guy declined. So after riding around and getting ridiculous quotes I got fed up and decided to do it myself.
Since I have a service pit it was quite easy to inspect the car's underside for mountings for the tow bar. I had to take this plastic cover off to see what is between the bumper and the rest of the car. It's probably just adding unnessesary weight in any case :-))
Looking for mountings for a tow bar the following was observed.
Left side and right side had these formed parts where the suspension hinge in. The idea would be to drill a hole in each above the hinge mountings, in the left picture from right to left, and in the right picture drill from left to right.
The only place towards the rear of the car where you can mount anything was the bumper pillar. That is the black part you see above the exhaust to the left of the foil and in the rounding of the bumper bottom. A quick call to BMW confirmed that they are quite sturdy and would be able to support the weight.
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Another view of the bumper pillar.
I decided to use 10mm flat bar and where nessesary use the flat bar to form profiles that can support the tow.
The first step was to use 6mm round bar to make a former. This is easily manipulated into the correct form that can fit the two cross mountings. The top one fits in between the two holes I am going to drill as above, and the bottom piece is formed so it is just at the outside of the two bumper beams.
10mm flat bar may not seem strong, but it is tougher than you think. I had to loan a cutting torch to soften the flat bar so one can bend it. As you can see all sorts of complicated tooling was used to do the bending. The formers in the previous picture was used to copy the forms. My friend trying his hand at heating the flat.
Some impressive nightly fireworks thanks to canon... cutting the ends off the flat bar to the right length.
And finally after the usual cussin, burning, groaning (standard procedure) this is what the tow bar looks like so far. As you can see the parts is going to be bolted together. The setup does not allow one to make the tow bar one price and bolt it in place.
A better idea of how it is going to be put together..
The welding started. Front end first You can see the mounting holes on the ends.
Some more welding. The hole you see on the rear bracket hooks over the rear cross bar, this will have the material carry the weight and not the single bolt.
The cross bar on the right. The flat bar welded to the piece on top will keep the cross bar from trying to bend. The bracket on the left will hook over the bumper pillar and gets a bolt through to clamp it so it wont swing.
That is how the cross bar gets joined at the rear.
Almost there. Another view of how it looks.
And another view. Ok I know the welding is a bit overdone, but rather safe than sorry.
Last picture of my welding. Just wanted to empisize the sufficient welding ;-)
Parts get painted. All that remains now is to fit it to the bee em trouble u.
Finally fitted. The bolts left and right was a bit difficult to get in and tighten (yes, nylocks), my hands doesn't fit too well in small cavities. Thank goodness for sockets and wrenches and funny spanners like vice grips. I got it in,
Final step was to put the protection cap on and do the wiring. I bought a plug for the wiring that had a ready made mounting bracket on it. Just bolted to the back of the ball plate (Not showed here).
Quick summary -
Price quoted by BMW for a ready made tow bar (doesn't fit this model though) > R 8000
Price for this model - None. They don't make a tow bar for this model bee em trouble u, sorry, you can't fit a tow bar.
Material cost (I had the ball) - R 270
Time to complete - About two days, not full time though. Had to sleep during the night.
Does it work - Yip ! As solid as anything.
Satisfaction - Huge ! I'm probably the only person with a tow bat on this model bee em trouble u !
I also don't like it if someone tells me you cannot do something. Suck on this one, BMW.