"Speaking" with a mechanical compliance engineer the other day, I learnt that it was best to ditch the whole insulting mess that the front end is in and start afresh. That is, remove the front mounts entirely and cut those extension pieces off that rubber mount to the body and do the same with the rear mounts and create a structure that is welded to the front end as well as welding to a plate which is then bolted to the chassis, thus eliminating things like movement and the necessity to have a telescopic steering shaft.
Damn! And I spent ages sourcing one of them! (A mid 90's Ford Courier intermediate shaft - or Mazda Bravo as they are also labelled)
Troy, the engineer, sent me some photos as examples of what he means, and I am sure he won't mind me sharing these great designs with you. Troy made them himself and apparently sells them as a kit for Chevy pickups only at this stage. I would have thought Ford pickups were more popular, but it doesn't appear to be the case as there seems to be far more Chevy pickup projects going around than Ford ones, and I don't really know why. Maybe it is just because there are more of them available?
So, what this means is that ridiculous abomination that that Butthole created on my chassis gets cut out. I am probably going to have that section boxed as, due to his lack of understanding of the basics of physics, his straight cut welds across the chassis have created weak points. That fool must have been on drugs when he designed that. Also, those horrible front brackets are going.
In its place will be a nice plasma cut plate with a style and shape similar to the ones you see here, only the Ford chassis is wider than the example shown here which is an early model Chevy, but the principle is still the same.
I particularly like these round boss style bungs. Troy makes these as well, so will have to order some from him. Not sure of the bolt size, but they look substantial, and they have Allan key heads for a nice touch. I guess high tensile bolts with a nylon thread would be just as effective, but this style looks very cool and purposeful.
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