Friday, November 21, 2014

DS subframe mount complete

Welded on the doubler.

Here is the underside where the new subframe tube mounts onto the frame rail doubler. These are my first upside down welds.  The technique seemed to be: dwell for a short moment on the 16ga frame rail, then drag the pool onto the 3/16 and dwell longer.  I did a series of spot welds without letting the weld totally cool before advancing.  The last thing I need is for the puddle to fall out leaving a humongous rip in the frame rail.

Here you can see the piece that plugs the hole, and the tube welded on.  A Gusset will be added to the back so that all the force in the tube isn't getting resolved into a piece of 1/8 sheet only.

If I sit on the bumper and kick the subframe it is probably at least 4x as stiff front to back now.  It is really hard for me to estimate what crash loads would be like on any of this stuff, and I haven't found how to design for it in any of the books I have been reading. Fortunately there are 3 more brackets to make for a total of 7 tying the engine into the car.  I am really trying to push for overkill on this to protect myself from my ignorance.

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