Friday, February 12, 2016

hammer massage

Went to put the bracket in and the control arm wouldn't go in.  Normally when I make a clevis, I stick a washer in the stackup to leave a little space.  I forgot to do that this time, and when all that welding pulled things in it was a little too narrow.  The bracket is really stiff, and took an enormous force to spread even a little.  I was planning for hammers and press, or cut pry and reweld.  I didn't really like any of these options.

I figured I would try and use the tig torch to bend the bracket.  I ran an autogenous weld across the bracket.  Below you can see where I ran the torch across next to my previous weld.  Although running a large gap would have had a higher heat input, I decided to keep the gap small so that the weld wouldn't look gnarly.

This opened the clevis .020 inch and allowed the arm to install with a few gentle hammer whacks.

Installed!
 

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