Changing a bunch of the previous owner's "stuff"

I've been constantly amazed at the amount of sketchy, cheesy, scary, and downright ridiculous "stuff" the PO did or at least lived with. I've been changing, fixing, and completely re-doing the worst first. Here's the steering arm as it was when I got the car. Looks okay, but was way too short. The draglink was so close to the tire, turning left was very limited.



I built this extension, moving the draglink 2" closer to the frame.


This is the extension welded in place. I left the "axe head" shaped part of the steering arm to utilize it as a gusset.



Here is the finished product, with the draglink moved away from the tire so I can turn left.

I'll post pics of some of the other changes, now that I've figured out how to post bigger images. But it may be slow going......

I guess it was more important to him that it resemble a Klingon battle ax.[ddd

I thought about cutting that whole shape off, but finally decided to tie it into the extension and use it as a gusset. It should make a dandy rabbit-chopper!

This is the setup the PO had to hold the panhard bar.....scary to say the least.



I took the whole panhard bar mess off and built a pair of trailing arms to locate the rear end housing.

When I took the bolt out of the front pivot on the ladder bar on the driver's side, this happened....no penetration at all. I cleaned everything up and re-welded the bracket to the housing.

I believe that setup was soon to be making sparks there Animal.

I'm not getting how the trailing arms will do what the panhard bar was supposed to do.

Willowbilly3 said:

I'm not getting how the trailing arms will do what the panhard bar was supposed to do.

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Triangulation. Man thats a hard word to spell

That is some scary stuff there the PO did.

GJunktionMike said:

Triangulation. Man thats a hard word to spell

That is some scary stuff there the PO did.

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What Mike said....triangulation. Basically the same setup as a wishbone, only two separate arms. The angles of the arms and the mounts keep the housing centered. Hopefully this picture shows the angle better.

I keep thinking I'll run out of scary stuff to fix.................

Man those welds the previous owner did are some scary stuff, especially on critical components like that.

-Chris

1952B3b23 said:

Man those welds the previous owner did are some scary stuff, especially on critical components like that.

-Chris

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Yeah, now I'm looking at everything a lot closer.

animal said:

Yeah, now I'm looking at everything a lot closer.

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Yea with good reason. Just curious, whats the project?

-Chris

I Feel Your Pain

Helping to teach my daughter what not to do [

animal said:

What Mike said....triangulation. Basically the same setup as a wishbone, only two separate arms. The angles of the arms and the mounts keep the housing centered. Hopefully this picture shows the angle better.

I keep thinking I'll run out of scary stuff to fix.................

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I guess it's just the camera angle or something but the angle of triangulation looks really shallow.

Willowbilly3 said:

I guess it's just the camera angle or something but the angle of triangulation looks really shallow.

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I'm just curious, but the rear end moves up and down but your pivots are at an angle, won't there be binding?

The bars are at an angle, but the mounts are aligned with each other. The Heim joints should allow up and down movment just fine, while keeping the rear end housing centered. I'm not at home, won't be for aa week or so, but I believe the front and rear mounts are at least 18" offset (over a span of 29-30") I think the triangulation will be enough. There isn't much room to do anything else.

1952B3b23 said:

Yea with good reason. Just curious, whats the project?

-Chris

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It's my '26 Dodge Brothers five-window coupe.....decent pictures here.... http://ratrodsrule.com/forum/showthread.php?t=30807&page=2

I know the feeling on reworking other people's crappy work. You should have seen some of the junk I found after I tore into the Linc. Some welds were good, some were just barely catching anything. Brackets with no bracing at all. And to top it all, the trans pan was sitting on the wishbone.....absolutely no front suspension travel upward. Some of it I caught before I got it, some didn't show up until I really got under it. It's worth it in the long run though. When we get through, we'll know things are right!

animal said:

It's my '26 Dodge Brothers five-window coupe.....decent pictures here.... http://ratrodsrule.com/forum/showthread.php?t=30807&page=2

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I remember seeing that thread, its all coming back to me. Very nice ride!

-Chris