Michael Maskalans <dml@tepidcola.com> wrote:
:> Unfortunately,
:> he was a naughty boy and welded the outer frame rail brackets
:> on before the inner ones, so now he has a fun game ahead of
:> himself which I shall call "find the threaded holes through the
:> 1/4" steel plate" ;-)
: I've been thinking about that. I'm not sure how much strength those
: little 10mm bolts are going to add anyway.... and I need to add a
: spacer between those inner mounts and the outer mounts too - was
: thinking 3/4" Al plate, since that's about how much space I need and it
: wouldn't suck to shape & drill. but bling, bling, bling. I'm
: expecting that to be relatively $pendy. And then there's my other more
: recent consideration: I've got 4 grade 8 1/2" bolts on each side. Just
: how much strength will 4 10mm bolts add?
So I am assuming that you were able to determine that the
crossmember wouldn't be able to slide straight back with the
inner mounts flush with the inner frame rail? Last I heard
on that front is you were planning to tack the inner mounts
in place and give it a try to see if you'd be able to get
away without using any sort of spacer. I didn't see any
ground off tack welds on the crossmember which I took to
mean that you either forgot or determined it wasn't going
to work via another method. :-)
Assuming for a second that the "slide the frame rail
straight back" plan wouldn't work, what about cutting the
inner mounts in half such that the top part can bolt flush
to the inner frame rails and the bottom part (which would
be welded to the crossmember) actually bolts to the top
part, using a line of 4-6 holes in each half such that
you could basically sandwich it with plate on each side
with corresponding holes for the bolts which would hold
the two pieces together? Something like this: (warning,
crappy ASCII art eminent!)
(looking at the plates "on edge")
| <-- top half of cut in half mount, bolted to
| inner frame rails
|
|||
=|||= <-- bolts go through here
|||
| |
|||
=|||= <-- bolts go through here
|||
|
|
| <-- bottom part of cut in half mount, welded
to crossmember
(side view)
/ Mount bolted to frame /
/ /
/----------------------------/
/ /
/ O O O O /
/ /
/ "sandwich" plate for bolts /
/ /
/ O O O O /
/ /
/----------------------------/
/ /
/ Mount welded to crossmember/
/ /
--
-Jon-
.-- Jon Steiger ---- jon@dakota-truck.net or jon@jonsteiger.com --.
| 1970 Barracuda - 1990 Dakota 'vert - 1992 Ram 4x4 - 1996 Dakota |
| 1996 Intruder 1400 - 1996 Kolb FireFly - 2001 Ram QC 3500 CTD |
`------------------------------------ http://www.jonsteiger.com --'
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