Repairing Torque boxes

August 01, 2007, 06:12:06 AM

Well, the time has come to say goodbye to the southsides. The are really playing HELL with my torque boxes. Even though they have the battle box style reinforcements welded to them, I still managed to rip and twist them out a bit on the outside (twards the outside of the car) about the width of the lca bolt. There are multiple stress fractures all over the boxes themselves.

We noticed this a while (a month or two) back and decided that we were going to weld them back up. Seeing as we only had a stick welder and some rust buster rods, we were either burning through, or sticking. Plus, we could not get the stinking bolts out of the sleeves in the southsides. since this is my daily driver for now, we jacked the arms back up into the correct position, put the nut on the bolt, and welded the entire nut to the box. F it. SO.... now I have some questions. when i remove the southsides, I know that i'm going to have to use a saw-zall to cut the bolt on both sides. One side will come out just fine, but that leaves a welded nut on the outer part of the box. Here's what I think. Open the box up wide (we have to re-weld it anyways) and use an angle grinder ot lop it off flat to the portion its welded to. Then fab up a plate (1/8 " plate steel) for it and weld it into place. then drill another hole. Sound like it will work? we are also going to re weld all the cracks with a wire feed, and then encase the whole setup with fabbed and welded plate steel (1/8") kind of like this the attatchment.

Oh.... and Ive already ordered my CHE arms. :D

Repairing Torque boxes

Reply #1 – August 01, 2007, 08:51:08 PM

Just got off the phone with Wolfe Racecraft in Texas.

2 day air for the lower plates is a grand total of 57.00 even. Not bad at all. I'm welding all the seams possible also, so i'll take pictures of the progress on sunday.