Ok, a few years ago i decided I was going to go de-dion. Did all the work last year on the chassis.

Including remaking the trailing arm mounts so that they could cope with de-dion or live axle & also gave me the choice of running anti-squat by re-welding hte upright 1" steel box and making new mounts off that.

Last week I finally completed making my new trailing arms with poly bush one end, rose joint the other.

Tonight fitted it all and ............

the trailing arms foul the de-dion. I've stupidly (accidentally) set the de-dion arms so that they're running too much anti squat. If i could mount them lower they'd be ok.

So ....... if i remove again the trailing arm chassis mounts (again) and the upright 1" steel they're welded to (again) how many times can you weld the 1" upright steel chassis bit onto the other pieces of the chassis before the heat affected zone puts you in trouble?

I'm seriously pee'd off. I thought apart from the roll hoop and seat belt mounts i'd finished welding.

Right, helpful answers please, i'm off to get seriously hammered.

have you got any photos?

not at the moment, walked out in disgust!

will do in a bit maybe one i've eaten and got ready to go out.

cool, coz depending on the space, where it is etc, could you leave the ones already in place as they are, and just welding a new bracket on. without seeing it though i don't know exactly what you mean so could all be irrelevant.

my chassis has 10 holes for the rear trailing arms, you'd never use most of them, but they're there.

sort of thought of that - except where the holes want to be is too close to an existing hole.

Options as i see it are -

cut out bracket (which is full size of 1" vertical steel bit it mounts onto) and make new.

cut out bracket and upright and make new.

cut face with bolt holes off braket and make new

cut face off bracket and buy 'normal' style bracket and weld those onto the 3mm back face of the existing bracket which is fully welded to the 1" steel chassis tube.

or get drunk and scrap this sodding car.

photos in a few minutes.

actually some in my gallery now..

http://www.locostbuilders.co.uk/photos.php?action=gal&user=miker&folder=Trailing%20Arms

get drunk for starters, come back to it tomorrow night
its amazing how so problems that just seem sooo bad, are actually dead simple fixes when you forget about them for a while.

other option - shorter shocks .....

seeing as the avo westfield 14 inch jobs only do 2.75inch travel before the bump stop ..... i'm tempted with this.

Hi,
I didn't know you could do anti-squat with de-dion. What do you use, unequal length arms or do you use non-parallel arms? Or something else?

Cheers,
Craig.

well, looking at the photos, the trailing arm hits the tube, but with the suspension hanging right down, with the car build, and sitting on its own wheels etc, i doubt it's going to be a problem. but if it is, shorter shocks to stop the axle dropping that low would be fine.

i'd wait til its all built and sitting on its wheels etc first.

here's the silly problem i had though, so you'll see where i'm coming from,
I build my intake manifold before the engine was in the car, the tubes were all at the wrong angle, and with the engine in, the carbs hit the top of the chassis (i've got 2 diagonal tubes across the top on the engine bay) with the carbs in roughly the right place, they hit the alternator, and the steering collumn hit the alternator too, spent months worrying about, was about to chuck it all in and spent a fortune on weber carbs and manifold, and new alternator and brackets. last weekend, took another look, saw that it i ground a bit of the bottom aternator brackt out, it cleared the steering colloumn. excellent. in doing that, the alternator rolled over a bit away from the engine, and suddenly there was plenty of space for everything...

so, don't worry, move onto something else, and when the car's on its wheels, everything will become clear

issue is that at almost full droop the suspension component is taking the weight of hte axle. I'd expect and hope thats an IVA fail. I want this to be right!

hence reluctantly resigned to making new brackets (or cutting a large 'drain' hole in the de-dion hub carrier tube...... but thats too much of a bodge for me)

So back to the questions on heat affected zones and trailing arms .....

quote:

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Originally posted by MikeR
issue is that at almost full droop the suspension component is taking the weight of hte axle. I'd expect and hope thats an IVA fail. I want this to be right!

hence reluctantly resigned to making new brackets (or cutting a large 'drain' hole in the de-dion hub carrier tube...... but thats too much of a bodge for me)

So back to the questions on heat affected zones and trailing arms .....

---

looking at this one though

Description

if you put the hole any lower, it looks like the trailing arm might hit the chassis?

strangely it doesn't.

If the arm was right at hte bottom 2mm from the chassis it would have to angle upwards.

Weld another strip of steel on the out side and re-drill the holes
weld the original holes first jobs a good one

Shorter shocks, why would you want full droop to be that far down !

Alternative is to use axle catch straps like they used to have on series landrovers, basically a loop of webbing that restricts full droop, no need to buy shocks now.

Regards Mark

No dont you have to weld anything.
Got the same story on my car...
just lower the mouting points on the chassis and put the bump stops on the chassis.
It will be fine.
If you want to make it another way you can crank the arms (lower) to miss the tube.
Give me a shout on the blower if you want pix.....
paddy

Curved lower arms on the bottom, bit of messing about making them but it will save you having to cut anything off.






[Edited on 25/4/09 by yellow melos]