Had a customer bring this frame in. Someone tried to do the job of un-narrowing & boxing the frame. They did an ok job on getting it straight but the 110V mig was not up to the job and the skill set came up a bit short too. We got started on it this week by plasma torching all the boxing plates off, along with the 1/4" wall x-member (Yikes) and the unused x-member that got put in for no apparent reason. Here's some before shots. The customer was rightfully nervous about this stuff. X-member corner. angle iron plates over the frame joints. Spring perch hangers. The "bead" on the left is the only weld actually near the frame joining seam. The rails were only held on by those angle iron pieces that were stitched on. After cutting off one plate we find this. No welding on the rails at all and straight vertical seams. A 30-45 degree slice would have been way better. Or even doing the seam 1" further forward to share the load on the x-member. We opted to remove it all and start as fresh as possible. Plasma cutter to the rescue! Still, even with that the process, to reverse this is tough as hell. Very tedious trimmings. A little here , a little there. A few hours later you have this. 2 pcs again. The frame had already been braced up before we cut the rail through the rest of the way (1/2" of weld slag). More cleaning up and squaring up and evening top, bottom, and sides. Now we have a usable set of halves tacked together.
Top of the rail. The wider part is a remnant of the boxing plate that has not been sliced off yet. Here' the new 1/8" steel fish plate. It splits the seam and will reinforce the joint on the inside where it will never be seen. Once the outside is welded and sanded it will appear to be untouched. Stitched the first weld up so far. About to finish getting the other side to this same point. More to follow in the coming weeks.
When they sell guns at walmart, people who shouldn't own them do. when they sell welders at home depot,,,, awe hell What's the use
Got some more cleaning and measuring done this week after returning from vacation. Got the rails evened up. The r/s one was 1/4" longer than than the l/s. Added the fish plates to the inside and welded those in. Also welded the seams and ground the outer surfaces of those seams clean. A little high build primer and some sanding will hide what's left of the seams. Next up will be boxing the rails with 10 Ga. steel plate, corner welding and dressing those corners. Then we will get the engine in place so we can fab the x-member/k-member and recheck the body fit before redoing the spring hangers.
That looks ALOT better. How much you wanna bet the guy that originally welded up the frame called all his buddies over to see how nice a job he did. His buddies probably congratulated him on his skills...
good save the only thing i would have done different was make the fish plate diamond shaped on the vertical side welds, but that is a hell of a lot beter than before tk
Just a suggestion, some rosette welds and double humps on each end of the plates. Kind of like a smooth letter M laid down on its side. Nice save otherwise.
thank god you cleaned that mess up , the first guys welds looked like chicken poop stacked with chop sticks ,those were some truly aweful welds , nice work on fixing the mess up
What are you talking about, just add a little more Jb weld and you'll be fine...right? Anyways, I hope that someday soon i will be able to weld as nice as that repair job to the repair job.
Just because you have a welder doesn't mean you can weld, and that frame is proof of that! Glad to see it is in the hands of someone that can do the job right. Those welds were just scary!
The car is a '32. I imagine the frame is the same. Don't enough of old Plymouths to know any different. As for the fish plates, we are boxing the rails so appearance issues are a non-issue, hence the MIG welding. And as far as stress risers go- with the newly boxed inside rails the vertical welds are well supported and the loads are displaced very well.
Those welds are useful and done properly but I have never been really proud of my MIG skills. I TIG better and even then I suck when compared to some of the guys on here. I get the welds in there strong and fairly neat but I see things on here that make me feel like a loser. I don't post on here all that much anymore but I read and look and am always impressed by good work from the "masters". But thanks to all you guys for the positive comments. More updates in a few days I hope.
I know I'm not breaking any speed records here with this job. It was a lot more work than we originally thought from the phone conversation. We got the r/s rear 2/3 of the frame boxed and welded and ground. Still working on the rough out of the l/s. After that we can do the front sections with the rear spring mount reinvent.
It looks like the original welder ran that thing through the crack of his ass and knocked the hair off. Nice save on a very damaged frame.
This is a disturbing picture you have now planted in my head. I can vividly see the guy standing there dragging the box tube through asscr..a.c...k.......Barf. HAHA. More pix will be up a bit later.
Not picking on a nice job because I am far from a pro frame man...but...I have been told by truck frame fabricators never to weld in the corners like shown above. Make the fishplate be shaped to fit inside the frame C channel with small flanges so all welding is done on the flanges and main frame and not into the corners.Supposedly welding in corners like above will cause stress cracks Is this only true on heavy truck frames,or just nothing to be concerned about?
Hey Trucked', my shop is next to a spring shop and the old timers there don't weld to frames at all. Something about truck frames being tempered due the loads they get (and a lot of twisting) and some other shit like that. They either bolt or rivet brackets and or when they lengthen or shorten. I never work on older truck frames but I am sure there is some validity in that statement. There are bunches of stress riser theories out there. Things like not welding all the way around tabs and brackets and stuff to allow a little twist and so that a crack won't travel all the way through the attachment due to vibration. Also not welding all the way around a fish plate. Diamond shapes or other not straight line shapes. The reason you were told not weld the corner was because of the twisting forces the open "c" truck frame would see. The open corner will allow some movement. A very small amount but just enough to not tear the frame corner when the rail twists. Every theory has an equal and opposite counter theory in most cases. I work from my experience and from what I have learned working with the older fab guys when I was coming up working in other shops. Being that the frame is boxed on the inside now the stresses that may have been in question are surely displaced to the inside plate and there is way less twisting in that rail that would cause a riser to tear the corner or fracture that straight vertical seam. If I were relying on the plate in an open "c" frame then the repair procedure would surely have been different. Also this frame will get a k-member and that will stiffen it up quite a bit more, reducing the twist factor even further. So yes, you are right. And yes, my repair is good too. Good stuff though. I love when threads spark discussion like this. Here's the final result of the boxing.
You know, there are always "I would have done this" or I would have done that" statements, but the fact is, barring a major accident, that frame will outlast anything that is put on top of it... common sense just says so, and that is the end of the story.... Nice work man.
Thanks for the good word 39! We got back on this chassis this last week and got a few more things nailed down. When it left all the boxing plates were done, the owner test fit some stuff and tacked his motor mount mounts in where he wanted them. He brought it motor and trans set in place for us to do a x-member. We opted for a k-member with a drop out center section for future trans removal. K-member is made from .120" wall 1 3/4 box steel tubing. the drop out bolt holes were bushed in the holes for 1/2" bolts with .120" wall 3/4"OD tubing. Here's the K-member on the table waiting for final trim and fit in the frame. Next we removed some old boxing plates under the frame rear x-member and trimmed the sheet metal x-member to be able to cap and wrap the end of the frame. In doing that we also bushed through the frame and hung the shackles through the rail end instead in brackets beneath it. This lowered the car about 2" without the need for added lowering blocks. The front leaf mounts got cut off, evened accordingly side to side and reattached properly. Made some patches for the x-member corners to complete the rear corners that needed to be reworked to allow the shackle mods. This is the center x-member section that was in the rear x-member. When held up the light you get an ides for the welding that was on this frame. And here's the bottom of that piece. I guess they couldn't form the corner so they welded in strips in an attempt to make it match. It didn't. If you ever need a 90 degree bend and don't have a brake just use angle iron. Need a double 90? just use box tube. K-member in the frame with the driveshaft loop. We opted for 1/4" plate instead of tubing this time to reduce the overall height of the loop. This sticks up high enough already. Tubing would have been easier but taller. Shocks were moved to the front of the axle so we could make the shock x-member and pinion snubber mount all one piece. I still have to get the snubber parts mounted up. After the snubber, we'll get that x-member center back together and get the gas tank fabbed and mounted.
I think he does. I'm sure he does not like the cost though. I'm not happy about having to remove all that crap either. Here's a progress report: We cleaned up the cuts from someone else's hand. It's actually gonna work out well for a patch. We got a piece of 14 gauge to match the rest of the part and started to form the contour of the rear edge a little at a time in the press brake. Then we worked the counter bend into place. Set it in place and tacked here and there as we pulled it all into shape. We still have to finish the welding and sanding the seams. Then we will trim the rear edge and add a 3/4" rib under the edge to reinforce the corner and eliminate the knife blade edge. After that we will form the forward bend in place. Of course we need to do the fuel tank first so we can see where it'll all lay out.
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