This is the first project I started after getting my steel shipment. In the first photo you’ll see how I drew this out as 5 separate pieces. Reason being, this piece bolts to the frame rail using 6 bolts and they must align along the frame rail length as well as along the top edge of the frame rail.
You can see in the photo how the original piece is bent into a c-channel shape along it’s length, and then bent perpendicular to establish the tabs that were originally riveted to the frame. What I was up against was that I had to make sure that when I bent this up, that the holes had the correct width spacing as well as vertical spacing. I found a formula online about how to calculate what’s called “bend allowance”, but I wasn’t sure I could get this absolutely right, so I made it up into 5 pieces that would be welded together.
First step was to weld the c-channel shape by welding the side pieces to the top:
Body Mount Tack Welded
Body Mount Partially Welded
Even after all my careful measurements, I still made a mistake. Here’s one of the tabs which allow the body mount to be bolted to the frame rail. I’m not sure where I messed up but you can see I was way off. I’ll have to make this part from hand and not used the laser cut parts.
Body Mount Oops
Here I’ve bolted part of the body mount to the original frame rail. The next steps are to bolt the two tab pieces to the frame rail and then tack weld the tabs to the body mount side pieces. This will ensure that the part will bolt back up to the frame rail. Assuming I have the measurements right on the laser cut pieces. As I write this I think I’ll wait to bolt it up to my manufactured part instead of trying to bolt it to the original. Once I’ve tacked it together on my new frame rail I can double check it against the original to see how far off I was.
Body mount bolted to frame rail
