Joined: Wed Nov 17 2010, 03:28PM
Location: florida
Posts: 1311
I will see if i have more pics. I have a convert so most of the connecton is under my torque boxes but i used 2" tube and it fit over frame and i welded around that . I z"ed the rails inboard to clear the bolt cuz it dead ended right on top of it. I added the 1/4 plate at the front to have something beefier to weld to.the addition of connectors really stiffened my car, no twist at all no matter where i jack from. I will try to get a pick of the driveshaft loop a added that is welded to the connectors to help add even more strength besides safety
Joined: Thu May 01 2008, 11:15AM
Location: Chicago,IL
Posts: 2868
I would personally take a 3 sided weld on the box vs bolt in for strength. I can't imagine you'd be taking the subframe back off ever unless you got in a wreck and in that case cutting those welds would be the least of your troubles.
Joined: Sat Aug 19 2006, 05:03PM
Location: Ontario, Canada
Posts: 2919
I bought a one foot long piece of 2x2 steel tubing to cut up and figure out how I can fit the back end over the rear subframe rail.
Just as Dacuda found, it winds-up pointing straight at one of the front subframe attachment bolts. There's not enough wiggle room to angle it where I want it.
What to do? I could...
weld two sections of 2x2 tubing side-by-side to move it over as Dacuda did.
put another pie-cut in the side of the box to angle it.
cut the sides off the end so it doesn't slip over the frame rail, but just sits on it (a bit crooked) and weld it the best I can.
just run it straight up to the front and trap the bolt inside. I won't ever need to remove the front sub again anyhow, right?
Joined: Mon Feb 18 2008, 11:08PM
Location: Tewantin, Queensland, Australia
Posts: 405
My choice would be/will be "just run it straight up to the front and trap the bolt inside. I won't ever need to remove the front sub again anyhow, right?"
Joined: Fri Aug 05 2011, 08:06PM
Location: Brisbane Australia
Posts: 132
looking at mine, i would look at putting the rail on the outside of the torque box, put a saddle in the back end to leave room for the spring hanger bolts, would move it over a bit, also consider putting a "Y" at the crossmember end to avoid the bolts, put a big assed plate in at the end of the "Y" with bolt holes as well? will make it better vs twisting too
Some bracing between the new rails where the seat re-enforcing is ("U" shaped bracing where the seats bolt through) would stiffen it up allot and give you somewhere good to attach the front tailshaft loop if you want one, The back seat seam join is regularly cut up too (looks like you already have), prob a good idea to add some support for the floor there too, even if you weld it up.
Sometime soon im going to over analyze the whole idea and plug the whole thing into a FEA program like solidworks to see how thin we can make some of the sections - shape is generally more important than thickness, also want to get some lengths of 2x2 and 2x3 and see how many holes can be drilled b4 affecting rigidity, another idea I have is dropping a cut up the guts of a beam, drill holes and use aprox the same square area of pipe as the holes in tubes as joiners for the 2 halves (aprox 1/2 in of pie or so), flip the halves around an weld it up, would end up like an I beam, but weight the same as the regular box section (lots of work to do that though...) anyway enough of my ramblings
Joined: Fri Aug 05 2011, 08:06PM
Location: Brisbane Australia
Posts: 132
I'm defiantly NOT an engineer - probably should have been one - misspent youth got in the way though
I do have a bit of a trade background, but are really a jack of all trades (master of little). I lurk on a couple of forums for building a Locost, https://www.google.com/search?q=locost&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=gieIUvXRDsqViQfUkoHgAw&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAQ&biw=1280&bih=683&dpr=1 a home built lotus 7 replica, which will be my next project after my fury - pretty much the opposite end of the car spectrum. FEA is a pretty common thing for these guys, everything is worked out to the Nth degree (literally) and i was going to use the frame connectors as an intro to solidworks for me - looking at it, it wouldn't take much more (ok, prob 100 hours of modelling) just to keep going and replace the whole sub frame with something way lighter - utterly pointless in the grand scheme of things barge wise of course.
If we applied what I do at work to the hobby we would have a book with a table where you roll a 20 sided dice to see how successful your modification was - I run a games shop - dungeons and dragons, miniatures wargames, trading card games, board games etc