Hi guys, been somewhat down and out with some trials in my personal life, but have been working from time to time.
Latest project is the cross brace for the front. I read all the stuff and looked at all the products and decided to do it myself. The tubing is flat oval that I ended up sourcing out of Holland and as it turns out, it was wider than the nice Restoration Designs brackets.
Anyway, one of the major requirements was that I left as much clearance as possible under the brace to put in luggage as my idea is still to tour with the car at some point. So two things, one to fit it as close to the frunk lid as possible and make the "X" part easily liftable which means I will hinge it onto the perpendicular brace (may also serve as a support for the frunk lid)
Anyway, here is the perpendicular brace
Bends on this was just brute force with the vice
Here are the ends...
Note where I had to neck the flat oval down. I used shoulder bolts (10 mm diameter with 40 mm shoulder length) along with bronze bushings in the perpendicular brace tubing to make a nice fit. I know that the bracket looks a little askew, but a whack with the hammer will get it back into line, it got a little bent in the furor of fitting.
There is some finishing to be done on these, but I will wait until the cross brace gets put in
Here are the bended cross brace tubes, I used my lift to do the bends (filled them with sand to prevent kinking) and then just lowered the truck tire on them until the bent the required amount...
Bends are pretty even and this will give a bit more clearance in the luggage side of things.
More to follow...
Dennis