When I pulled the engine out of my track car for a rebuild a couple of months ago I noticed a one inch stress crack. I'm curious if anyone knows of a good welder in the Minneapolis area? I have a mig welder, but my skills are not good enough nor do I want to tackle welding an important structural area.

I'm not in the metro but I may be down I think next weekend. What type of mig welder do you have? (flux or gas?)

Heated garage? Air compressor? Tools?

Hi Rick. I have a 110 gas mig, air compressor, decent tool selection and heated shop.

Can you photo the crack for us?

I don't have a pic handy. The car is located around 25 minutes away from my house and I'll try to get up there to snap a pic in the next couple of days.

Cool, Just PM me when you get some photos and I'll check in on this post. We may come down to get away for the weekend. We like to stay at the old Thunderbird and hang out at the pool for a night. No big deal to weld the crack but I want to get a real sense of what you have and if I need to think about any chassis stiffening while were in there to help prevent a repete in the same place or just transfering the crack to another location.

If Rick can't hook you up, my brother is an aerospace rated welder and lives in Champlin... He works for beer too!

Check with Aaron at Flat6-I've used him many times before-if he is unable to he will refer you to the right person to do the job correctly.

Good luck:
www.flat6.com

is it the suspension ear crack?

make sure you add brace bars or it will be back
I replaced the entire console in consecutive years back before I had bracing

brant

Ok, here is what we're working with. How bad are we talking?

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For reference, there is a brace that run on the outer long to the suspension ear area.

Closer up

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You need a brace like Brants. I stole this photo from his build thread.

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There is an adjustable truss rod and a brace here. I think someone sells a kit. Maybe Chris Foley... Lets see if we can find a kit for it so we don't have to fab everything from scratch.

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Foley has awesome bracing kits.

I assume this is the kit a couple of you have mentioned. Do I need the whole kit or just the heim joints and mounts?

http://www.tangerineracing.com/chassis.htm#Rear Pickup Points Reinforcing Kit

Looks like some of the rail is braced. Maybe one of the racers could comment but it looks like maybe you need the brace and brackets. The spot welds split near the crack so they will need to be re-inforced also.