SUSPENSION, Homemade Hairpins.

[HardLuck]

I know I'm putting "the horse in front of the cart" (in my case) but was wondering...
Has anybody here made their own hairpins?
What's involved, what did you use. ect...
-HL

[Sean]

I'm pretty sure SamIyam's built a set of his own. Maybe he will post some info if you ask him. Send him a PM.

[36-3window]

i've made them using 7/8" OD .188 wall DOM tubing. you need access to a lathe to tap the ends of the tubes for the clevis's....do this before you put a bend on the other end to join the two bars to some sort of short threaded tube for the frame rod end.. you will also probabilly need to put a bend on one or both bars,depending on your design , that can be done with heat as the thick wall tubing won't collaspe..take a look at pete & jakes and So-Cal to see how they are made..i built a simple fixture to hold the parts while tacking/welding to insure operfect alignment, i'd recogmend doing that

[HardLuck]

Why I'm askin' is lookin' in all my old '50s car mags most everybody seemed to have made their own. Some pretty rough but some pretty cool ones.
One nasty set I saw once was at the Chickashaw swap meet a few years back. On a '29 Ford Tudor with an overly long set of hair pins made out of re-bar. Wish I would have had my camera with me.

Sean,
thanx, I'll hit him up.

36-3W,
Thanx, that will sure get me started. Got some questions.
You happy with the clevis'? Seems like everybody making hair pins now are using the rod ends like on the four-link set ups. Personally I like the look of the clevis' better, but would like to know the advantages an disadvantages of both. The obivious one that the rod ends would have some shock absorbing ability because of the bushing but how critical is that?

Anybody know the diff between the asymetric and the symetric hair pins? Seems like I see more asymetric ones on track cars.

-HL

[C9]

36-3Window is right on the money with the construction technique.

Only thing I did differently was to use 7/8" x .156 wall tubing - DOM - because I had a couple sticks on hand for making tie rods and drag links.

The assymetric ones are like shown below?
I chose to make this style because I thought they would be stronger with a straight top tube due to the compression/tension loading they would undergo in normal use.
And . . . they look a little different from the SoCal rods that everybody seems to be using nowadays.

Threaded ends with poluy bushings on all three corners.
The front plugs into a Deuce Factory stainless batwing.
The batwing looks pretty good, but I think the clevis arrangement is a little better looking.
Used the batwings cuz I had em.

Far as bending them goes, I used one of the Harbor Freight pipe (not tubing) benders and it worked well for this particular size. The 1" die fits the 7/8" tubing just fine.
Note too that not too much of a bend was cranked in.

Having said all that I saw a very good looking pair of home-made radius rods couple days back.
Adjustable clevises up front, tie rod end on the back.
The tie rod plugged into a short piece of straight similar to what the SoCal rods do, but the straight piece looked to be about 8" or so long and extended forward where it had a machined tapered point on it. Said point was blended in and looked good.
What made this set of rods great was the back ends of the upper and lower rods were mildly bent and welded to the 8" straight piece.
Some of these were done in the good ol daze with the upper and lower tubes remaining straight and welded to the center threaded piece. Not as good looking as the subtle and not too sharp bend at the end of the rods I saw.
Nice part about the subtle bend was that the individual tubes are still loaded in mostly straight ahead compression/tension mode and the bends are so mild more than likely the rods will not flex there.

[Stevie G]

Do you have to use a lathe to thread them?
Why not just use a tap?

[C9]

[ QUOTE ]
Do you have to use a lathe to thread them?
Why not just use a tap?

[/ QUOTE ]

You do use a tap.
The lathe is needed to drill them to size because so little metal is cut away the drill grabs the tubing and the strong 1/2" drill motors will just about break your wrist.

Once they're drilled, it's best to at least start the tap in a lathe so you're assured of a straight thread.

Not sure what 36-3Window used for the threaded ends, but I used 5/8-NF to match my home-made poly bushing rings.

A thinking guy could set these up to drill in a floor model drill press without too much of a "lash-up."
You could start the tap in the drill press as well.

As a small fwiw there are tap handles designed to mount into the chuck of a drill press so as to assure accurate alignment. These are nice to use because you can go all the way with the tap handle connected to the drill press chuck rather than just start the tap with the tap mounted directly in the chuck, open the chuck, install the regular tap handle and finish the tapping.

[HardLuck]

C9:
"The asymmetric ones are like shown below?"
Yep, just like those.
You runnin' a tube axle or I-beam?
You make your bat wings, what did you use?
(more pic's if you don't mind)
I agree with you and like the looks of the clevis bat wings better than the rod ends but have to go with function in the end.

Steve:
I have seen threaded inserts you just weld in if you don't have access to a lathe.

Root:
thanx, It’s all academic right now, but will take you up on that later.

Anybody know what's going on with hair pins structurally? I would be interested.

-HL

[Digger_Dave]

[ QUOTE ]
One nasty set I saw once was at the Chickashaw swap meet a few years back. On a '29 Ford Tudor with an overly long set of hair pins made out of re-bar.
Sean,

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm sure everyone knows, BUT FOR GOD'S SAKE, (and your own) DON'T USE RE-BAR !!!

[Hackerbilt]

Just wondering... Would the traditional way to make a set be to use modified tierod assemblies? The tapping is done already and most likely the tierod ends are there too.
Using 4 tierod assemblies you could use the upper link as per C9's setup, with no bends and then cut, bend and weld the other two to finish the job. A leftover piece of the bottom tube could be used to make a diagonal between the upper and lower tubes if you felt the extra stiffness was needed.

Batwings could be made by slicing and diceing some old wishbones-chop just back from the forged end and do a vertical slot to fit the required plate. The tube stubs of the bone could then be cut and formed for a nice transition into the plates.

For the tapered tierod holes you could cut and weld buttons from the steering arms of the old axles you pulled the tierod assemblies from. (4x4's or old truck stuff-way stronger than car parts)
Toss them onto a bolt as a mandrel, put them in the drill press and then grind them to size as they spin. Makes them round and smooth. Mount them halfway thru the batwing plate and weld. Same for the frame brks.

Making sure the batwing doesn't twist on the axle from the additional side loading caused by the use of rod ends as opposed to clevis ends, should be as simple as adding a small steel block to the Batwing to bear against the axle itself. No welding to the axle however.

Never done it...but it seems thats the way it WOULD have been done before you could buy stuff...
Doing it this way, NO aftermarket involvement is required at all!
Any problems with doing it this way ya think?

Bill

[29EHV8]

Were just in the middle of buildin some hairpins at my shop.We have most of the work done now.I just gotta weld em up.OilCanHarry took some pics.I'll see if he can post em.I'll do a play by play of it all this week......Shiny

[SamIyam]

I made mine out of "tap tube" that you can buy from Lefthander chassis. I did a how'to when I built them... bit it, and the pics are long gine by now.

Anyway, the tap tube is just 1" od tubing with a wall thickness very close to what you need for tapping. I think I drilled it out for the 5/8" ends that I used (to the correct size for a 5/8NF tap.

I ended up making an Eddie Dye (sp?) styled hair pin. If you look over on my Traditional Trailer thread... you can see them on the Bomb Factory Digger.

I did the by making a short tapped piece... oh, maybe 7 or 8" long. Then welded two longet pieces along side it. After that, I simply heated the two long pieces up near the small piece and bent them out to the size of the batwing.

Done deal.

Sam.

[LUKESTER]

I built my own hairpins..... I used 1" .095 wall moly, with spuds you can get similar spuds from www.chassishop.com...... LUKE
http://my.vbe.com/~vcarlson

[LUKESTER]

I built my own hairpins..... I used 1" .095 wall moly, with spuds you can get similar spuds from the chassis shop in michigan.....LUKE
http://my.vbe.com/~vcarlson

[Roothawg]

Kevin, you can order the DOM tubing from Boyd steel over by the airport. We have an account there. Just tell em it's the Eliminators CC. They may have to order it but they can get it in a day or 2.

I used a conduit bender and had to heat the tubing a bit. Used it against the garage floor. Worked good and saved 250 bux. It's the set on the front of the fly.