Went out to the garage today to do a little work on making some front sway bar outer reinforcements for thise that have ripped em. Scratched off some undercoating and whats this - a reinforcement plate on the outside of the car!
This is my 74LE - came from the factory with sway bars all around. Never knew it was there - had no reson to look until today...

M

Pic of template for the big reinforcement plate - the notch for the brake line holder will not be in the part - just did it to fit it on the car for fitup.

M

Mark, are you going to continue it upward to completely surround the opening?

That outer plate is what came off with my mount, or most of it at least.

Yep - did not want to take it all off today. Actually I am making two different ones - one just like the factory and a larger one for anyone who has torn this area. The paper template shows the add on to the larger one.

M

I'm in line for a pair of the big ones. Probably also want your inner pieces with the nuts. Keep me posted.

Are you gonna run the big one up high enough to pick up the upper bolt holes? It's kinda hard to see on your pic.

If the upper part of it was radiused to nest in the pocket... out of 12 gauge.., it would be perfect.... to my way of thinkin'. If that is the case, I'll take 2.....it'd save me the trouble of making 4 of the things.

Here is a graphical view.

12G is gonna be hard to form and a little harder to weld up. I was planning on 16G to match more closely the gauge of the reinforcement in there.

Agreed it would be harder to fit, but... anyone that is considering this fix should know what they're doing or hire it out. I have a ball peen hammer and would shape it to fit before welding.
What I was going to do was chamfer the plug weld holes along with the entire perimeter down to around .06 for good penetration.

I can see no reason to shape the upper part as you're planning. Nesting (following the shape of the inverted 'U') in the upset area spreads the load over a wider area and gets away from the cracked out area. Any holes (missing metal) edges as in Jims picture can then be welded to the plate from the inside. It's a stinker of a job that I only want to do once.

QUOTE

I can see no reason to shape the upper part as you're planning. Nesting (following the shape of the inverted 'U') in the upset area spreads the load over a wider area and gets away from the cracked out area.

Not sure I understand what you mean. There is an indent area more pronounced at the top of the sway bar mount that will be extremeely hard to form to fit. I made the match up to a much lesser contour- hence the / and \ coming up from the bottom strip to the triangular area.

M

That piece looks familiar.

BINGO! ....and they say size don't count
That's even deeper than what I had in mind. I like.