FAST AUTO WORX
- Sat Jan 17, 2009 3:36 pm
#89710
Started today with the modification of the rear trailing arms, they needed to be shortened. First started by determining how much they should be shortened. The easiest way that came to mind was by using a weighted rope that was in the normal trailing arms center position. Any other way of measuring gave me the trouble of finding a straight line to determine the amount. The trailing arms have virtually no flat surfaces and there is too much difference between the awd arms and the stock arms. So the old fashioned rope it is!
first mounted a stock civic trainling arm and determined dead center, marked and fastened the rope. Then mounted the awd trailing arm and measured at the bearing center, the upper rear control arm and the lower rear control arm and found out that 36mm was the correct amount to be removed.
Then figured out the best position to cut the arm and went ahead. tacked it back together and rechecked...looked ok to me. welded it fully and then started to box in the rear part of the arm. The front gets it's treatment later this week, still not fully sure how I'm going to do the front...it still needs some thought....
pics:
first mounted a stock civic trainling arm and determined dead center, marked and fastened the rope. Then mounted the awd trailing arm and measured at the bearing center, the upper rear control arm and the lower rear control arm and found out that 36mm was the correct amount to be removed.
Then figured out the best position to cut the arm and went ahead. tacked it back together and rechecked...looked ok to me. welded it fully and then started to box in the rear part of the arm. The front gets it's treatment later this week, still not fully sure how I'm going to do the front...it still needs some thought....
pics:
hontec stuff
- Sat Jan 24, 2009 6:09 pm
#92133
Lost some sleep the last few days irritating myself about the fact that I wanted my trailing arm to look like a reinforced oem arm and not like a fabbed up arm that just meets it's goal.
I know that most of the people would tell me to shut up and that it serves it's purpose and that it's situated underneath the car and you won't see it.
Well that just doesn't cut it for me, I'm a perfectionist and I need every part of this car to be perfect...shoot me!!!
The fact that irritated me the most was that when I cut out a section to make it shorter, the tapered nature of the arm caused an overlap when welded back together again. I reinforced the arm underneath and will also do that on top, but that would still leave the overlapping welds visible and annoying!
I decided to fill her up with metal and smooth it out so that the original curves of the trailing arm would be restored...
Here you can see the overlap:
Welding on a piece of metal to fill it out:
And smoothed out after all welding was done:
And added a little paint to show the difference before and after:
I know that most of the people would tell me to shut up and that it serves it's purpose and that it's situated underneath the car and you won't see it.
Well that just doesn't cut it for me, I'm a perfectionist and I need every part of this car to be perfect...shoot me!!!
The fact that irritated me the most was that when I cut out a section to make it shorter, the tapered nature of the arm caused an overlap when welded back together again. I reinforced the arm underneath and will also do that on top, but that would still leave the overlapping welds visible and annoying!
I decided to fill her up with metal and smooth it out so that the original curves of the trailing arm would be restored...
Here you can see the overlap:
Welding on a piece of metal to fill it out:
And smoothed out after all welding was done:
And added a little paint to show the difference before and after:
