[ed martin]

Well, I made some forward progress on my project. My biggest regret is not having documented the process with a digital camera. I'll try to get some pickup shots later.

Upon further studying the problem, I realized that not only was the top element of the tube bent, but the sheet metal holding the bracket was significantly displaced. The car was hit hard on the driver's side. I consulted auto body shop next door and his feeling was that given the condition (rust) etc. that pulling it would only tear it apart. He suggested that I cut and weld. This is what the factory manual recommends as well.

Basically what I did was, using a long framer's level, find level position of the car using the front windshield opening as a reference. Once I had set the car level using the jacks, I then checked the level directly beneath the tube brackets and found that the driver's side bracket to be displaced maybe inch and a half upwards, which was consistent with the car heavily listing on that side. I then cut the sheet metal directly behind the bracket adjacent to the flange. This enabled me to drop the axle tube to the proper position. I actually had to stand in the battery box area and jump up and down to achieve the proper level. Once I was satisfied with the position I welded it into place. This left me with the problem of the lower brace not lining up to the bottom of the bracket. Since the bottom of the brace was pretty rusty, I ended up removing it with an impact hammer and refabed and welded all the rusted components and rewelded into its' new position. I also had to fabricate the bottom portion of the sheet metal in the bracket area to accomodate the new postition. I'll post some pictures later.

The problem remaining was the bent upper portion of the axle tube. After considering a number of approaches I decided to heat the affected area with acetylene and bend with a pipe. Luckily I have a machinist friend next door. I selected a cold rolled seamless tube 60mm diameter, which would just fit into the end of the axle beam ( with the needle bearing removed) but would not fit into the rest of the beam beyond where the bearing is housed. This portion I had turned by my friend on his metal lathe to just fit into the rest of the axle beam portion. We extended the turned portion to just reach the bent portion of the tube. My first attempt to bend back with the machined pipe and an extension ( eight feet total ) using the acetylene was a no go. That thing would just not budge. We heated three portions of the work but just had too much area to cover to get everything hot enough.

After a day of pondering I decided to cut the outer bracket area around the tube, leaving a degree of structural vulnerability and less surface area to heat. I cut about a quarter inch to three eights gap in the direction of the pull to give room for the bend. The idea of course is to fill the area in afterwards. This did the trick, but not without a lot of effort and amount of heat to get the inner bracket portion and the tube glowing red. I had to use all my strength ( I would estimate 200 to 300 lbs of pull later at the gym) giving a total of anywhere from 1400 to 2700 ft-lbs of torque! The bar barely seemed to give way but the telling was the perfect alignment of the bar with the torsion tube. Metal does have memory and it seemed to have fallen back into it's rightful place.

If anyone attempts this at home, don't forget to remove the inner bushing!

Well that's the update for now. Still a lot of challenges ahead, mainly fitting a replacement fender and the skirting and the proper alignment on positioning of the front fender and nose sheet metal.

Oh yeah, don't ask me how it drives because I haven't fitted the control arms yet. I'm still waiting for that replacement bushing.