Steering, Suspension, & Brakes

I took Jim B's advise and made up some tooling for my 20 ton HF press. The ram piece is a 3" diameter steel bar with a V groove turned into it and then cut in half. I welded a piece of 1 3/4" x 1/8" wall tube to it so it would fit over the 1 1/2" diameter ram on the press. The lower rollers are 1 1/2" aluminum bar with V grooves riding on 3/4" grade 8 bolts.



I practiced on an old 1" diameter sway bar that I had to see where the bends actually came out in relation to the marks I made on the bar so that I would end up with the proper amount of straight section between the mounting blocks.



To get the small reverse section at the end of the bar I had to tilt the press so the other end of the bar wouldn't hit the ground. A 4x4 and a 2x4 did the trick.



Here is the finished bar. It is 7/8" 1144 stressproof steel. It was easier to bend than I thought it would be.



Now I have to make the links to connect it to the lower A arms.

There are a number of ways to do that. About 3 decades back Dan B and I heated the ends of one in a coal forge, flattened them with a hammer on an anvil, and punched holes through the ends with a tapered punch. That bar is still on Dan's car today unless I'm mistaken. Obviously you could also attach threaded (female) rod ends either by cutting threads on the bar or by brazing, welding, etc.

Jim

I have a piece of tubing that is a slip fit over the bar. I'm going to slit it and weld on some smaller pieces of tubing to make a clamp. I'll then weld on some tabs for a heim joint. I'll probably use the stock poly bushings on the A arm end.

An adjustable clamp I'm guessing, so you can vary the length of the arm? Excellent idea.

Jim

Here is what the links look like