I've been speaking to Rian this afternoon, he has been busy making brake pipe flares and I have been busy drilling holes. Oh the joys of truck building
So by way of a quick up-date, I have made the first of the strengthening plates for the trailing arms, as mentioned above I wanted to avoid seam welding the sides and try to create a more factory spot weld / rivet look.
Even with simple jobs such as this the marking out is all important. The U-bolt holes are 7/8" giving me 1/8 clearance, the spring cup hole is 5/8" giving me about 1/16 clearance. The weld holes are just over 3/8" (actually 11mm) at 4" centres, the idea is to plug weld these in place giving a spot weld / rivet appearence (I'll let you know how that works out ).
Below is a picture of the first one, it needs a little more fettling and then it should be good to weld in place. The 2 lower ones will be longer, about 28", upper ones will be about 24"
