Dave's perpetual project

[Devastator]

Good catch. Good pic. Good times!

[TimS]

Did you pack the welder?

I'm jealous of the weather.

[BAJA-IT]

Glad to hear someone is having fun in their Baja.

[Skidmark]

I have always been a little leery of tubular trailing arms. I never had anything conclusive to back up my preference for boxed arms, that is until now! Glad you didn't have a major failure while driving. It tends to be hard to steer when your rear wheels are not pointing the same direction!

[Big Dave]

These are the Eagle chromoly arms. The crack is right at the heat affected zone which makes me believe it was improperly welded or heat treated. I should have just gone with heavier DOM.

[Ol'fogasaurus]

I should have just gone with heavier DOM.

They mustn't be DOM, they must be DAMN! Another good reason for a pre-trip inspection of all components.

Looking forward to meeting you.

Lee

[Ol'fogasaurus]

I haven't done any welding callouts for over 50... if I have done any but I do remember looking into it. The term stress relieving post welding was brought up which brought back some memories so, just for giggles, I did a short bit of research:

http://www.welding-advisers.com/Stress-relieving.html

http://www.aws.org/wj/sept01/cullison.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vibratory_stress_relief

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shot_peening

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peening

I wonder just how many people remember to do this.

Lee

[woodsbuggy1]

You might want to think about boxing your arms to spread the stress over a larger area and prevent flexing of the tubes. We run 5x5 tubular arms with 12ga material to fill in the upper and lower "windows" we have abused the arms without a single failure.
Good luck
Kenric

[Big Dave]

When i jacked it up, the gap closed up nice and tight, so after getting it cleaned up, I welded it back together and made a doubler plate for it.
Took the car out and pounded on it for a few miles today with no problems.

In a couple days, we'll load it up and take it to Quartzsite for a week or so. I'm looking forward to finally meeting Lee

[tikotiko]

Dam bro good catch quick fix and back at it. That's awesome

[JUSSUMGUY]

Good job Dave and quick too. Hope to see you at the May BOR race.

[dustymojave]

I agree to a certain extent with WoodsBuggy1.

I have no issues with whether arms are box or tube. I have seen both types fail. Some tube arms are better than others, some box arms are better than others.

Good gusseting is something I like on arms, tube or box. The point of a gusset is NOT to make a corner more stiff. That just moves a stress concentration point farther up the arm. The joint of the hub plate to the arm needs gusseting so the plate does not mount to the arm in a single plane. And the joint of the spring plate "tab" to the arm also needs gusseting. Those are by far the most common places for arms to fail, regardless of whether box or tube.

As to DOM or 4130...I would rather have a bent arm than a snapped off arm. Thus DOM is my preference for that particular component.

[CentralWAbaja]

Tap Tap Tap....is this thing on? Dave where did you go?