Project: 2003 BMW M3

[Beej]

Why did you end up epoxying plates rather than welding. Seems easier but not as structurally sound, no?

Just sorta happened, ha.  I originally just planned on pulling the diff to replace the input seal...once I got that out, the job snowballed.

Beforehand, I had talked to two race shops in the area about reinforcement, neither of which wanted to take it on.  So I was on my own.  My general experience (and I know there are good ones out there), is that welds always rust.  Even if properly protected on the outside, it's thin metal and I didn't trust it to not rust inside the RACP.

So that, combined with the fact that my RACP was in good shape, the car was stuck on jack stands, and I could do epoxy myself...here we are.

I am in no way qualified to speak to whether welding or epoxy is better/stronger (particularly for this application).  I did like that epoxied plates are "glued" for 100% of the surface area as opposed to just where the perimeter of the weld is.  Where the welds do one-up epoxy is that you're instructed to drill/expose the threaded receiver in the RACP so as to (rosette, I believe is the term?) weld all 3 layers of metal together.  All I really did was strengthen the skin.  I believe the "Vince-style" support is all done from above, so the plates shouldn't interfere should I decide to go that route eventually.