It’s been killing me to not show much progress lately. Even worse, I’ve had my lower control arm (LCA) plates cut for a couple weeks but haven’t been able to weld them on. We’ve been camping and I’ve been splitting wood for the winter. That’s kind of important around here. Never the less, I was able to carve out some time this afternoon to get these things welded on.
Let’s go through the process, shall we?
Why would you want to box the LCAs? These arms were designed without sway bars in mind. Sway bars tend to put torsional stresses on the arms. Therefore, boxing the arms stiffens them up in torsion.
There are lots of great companies that make these weld-on reinforcement plates. They’re usually about $20. I know what you’re thinking. Bloody expensive! Am I right? Well, maybe that’s not what you’re thinking. Maybe you’re thinking that you should have a burrito for lunch. But that doesn’t really pertain to this discussion. I decided to make my own plates because it’s cheaper and I wanted something that looked different- all the plates on the market look the same. I sketched up some plates after measuring the LCAs. I decided on an X shape to lighten while retaining stiffness. To verify the design, I printed out the plates in a 1:1 scale and taped them on the LCAs. This allowed me to check that I could still access the torsion bar adjustment screw. Here’s a picture.
I then had our waterjet operator at work cut them out of 1/8″ thick plate. Total cost? $2.39 for the steel and $6.55 payment for the operator. (That’s the cost of lunch at Jalapeno’s) Total cost: $8.94. Score. Make friends with people, it helps. Here’s how they turned out.
The LCAs have a curve to them, so these plates need to be bent into place. I could have tacked them in place on the end and bent as I went, but I wanted to make sure they were in place correctly before starting to weld. Here I am clamping them in place and beating them with a hammer.
After I verified fit once again, it was time to weld. I tacked it into place from one end to the other, clamping as I went so it would be a tight fit.
Once that was done, it was time to fully weld them. I’m not the world’s best welder, but these should hold just fine.
Here they are, all cleaned up and ready for paint.
I’m thinking of painting these a grey color instead of black so the detail shows up better. Should look pretty cool.
I still haven’t ordered the front end parts because I’m waiting on the final bill from Firm Feel. This is the end of the third week, so the steering box should be done soon.
Mechanical Engineer, Mopar guy, reluctant defender of the universe.
David Belau 
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