Finished repair
Not a pretty sight.
(Click on pictures to get a good look)
Jimmy took the gym van in to get the brakes checked out last Friday and not only did the shop find a bad brake line, they also found a bad spot on the front crossmember that holds the lower control arms in place. Not really a good thing. The bottom of the van is pretty much covered with big pieces of flaky rust. It looks like the previous owners sprayed it down with salt water every night before they put it to bed. We had the thing checked out when Jimmy drug it home, and while it looked pretty much like a 20 year old Dodge van from the Midwest, the front crossmember escaped detection. The bad spot was probably hiding under that flaky rust that I'm so fond of.
After getting the thing up on some ramps I checked the extent of the damage, and while it was certainly serious, it was just one small area. The metal on either side of the cracked spot was thick enough to tie into. This kind of work is definitely not my favorite but who else is going to do it?
The condensed version goes as follows: get the van on ramps, weld piece on control arm to level it out so the floor jack will support it, cut the nut off the pivot bolt, spray with penetrating oil and attempt to drive the bolt out, repeat this step while hitting hand with hammer, repeat this step, repeat this step, make pattern for new plate, remove old metal, cut out new piece, bend to fit, tack weld in place, make stiffener for bottom edge, tack in place, finish weld. After crawling under and back out about 100 times, job done. I should have chipped the slag off the welds and brushed the smoke off before taking the picture of the finished piece. While it's certainly not a work of art, it should be hell for strong. The metal thickness is about twice what the van started with and the 1/2" square rod I used for the stiffener along the bottom edge will keep everything securely in place. I still need to replace the brake line but that will have to wait until next week.
2 comments:
"It looks like the previous owners sprayed it down with salt water every night before they put it to bed." - That's the funny there.
DogBoy bought a little car recently with similar problems and some old Polok is helping/teaching him how to fix crap like that.
Good times.
If DogBoy can fix things like the gym van, he'll always have work. The only problem is that no one will pay to repair a 20 year old rust bucket van. If you get involved in restoration work on hot rods and upper end cars, that's a different story. Fixing up an old beater is a good way to learn the trade. Just keep your goggles on and your tetanus shot up to date.
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