I drained out my gas tank last night and removed it today getting ready to weld in the Engman reinforcments for my swaybar. Today I removed the tank and cleaned up a little - lots of mouse turds and crud. Pulled my swaybar and the outer bracket - there was no inner bracket. I had to cut away the front wheelwell reinforcement piece, a dremel with a cutoff wheel did a pretty good job here.

Below are pictures of my mount in place, I drilled a couple of holes between the mounting bolts that I will rosette weld from the outside, then seam weld the piece around the perimeter of the mount on the inside. I found a crack on the lower bolt hole which goes fore/aft and another crak going up and down just to the left of the lower mounting bolt. I will weld up those cracks when I remove the bolts from spot welding the outside and burn into the backing plate.

Another shot of the tear

A picture helps, eh?

Notice on the last pics, someone down the line drilled an extra hole so they could hold a loctited nut while they tightened up from the front - hokey. It will be hard to weld that up, so I may just leave it - what do you think?

front trunk

gas tank bay

nuther'

That's all for now, I'll show you how it turns out. Daisy, my new Boxer puppy and I thank you for stopping by

Hi Travis

Does the Engman plate not have an outer bracket like the factory and Weltmeister bars do?

I'll be watching Travis, I want Tarret bars for Carerror.
I wish I knew before the party.
Joe

Bryan, the engman piece is just the inner backing plate with integrated nuts on them. I have the welt outer plate which holds on the bushing - just not on the car for the moment for fitup and welding. Without the inner plate along with the outer plate sandwiched over wheelwell the tub can crack from stress.

Joe, those tarret pieces ought to be the bomb. I have their droplinks on my welt bar and like them a lot!

QUOTE (Travis Neff @ May 3 2005, 06:27 AM)

Notice on the last pics, someone down the line drilled an extra hole so they could hold a loctited nut while they tightened up from the front - hokey. It will be hard to weld that up, so I may just leave it - what do you think?

fix it now!
that area is stressed when the swaybar is loaded
ya don't want it to tear or crack...

QUOTE (Jeroen @ May 3 2005, 06:32 AM)

fix it now! that area is stressed when the swaybar is loaded ya don't want it to tear or crack...

Yeah, figured I'd have to do that. I can see that the crack goes straight to that hole, bah.

Good bad and the ugly, here we go. I welded up some patches where the access holes were, passenger side went good, driver side a little boogery but it's in there. On the reinforcment plates I welded the perimeter as best I could (not much room to maneuver around) and ran a few spots from the outside through the wheelwell into the mount for added strength. Tomorrow I will patch back up the squares I cut out for the reinforcents.

I also welded up the cracks in the wheelwell right into the plate (see above pic).

asdf

Looks like I got good penetration..

I need to grind down the outer welds and POR15 them up, I'll do it in silver to hide the burn marks and maybe it won't look so fuglee

last one, I think this one is blurry

Travis, are you using a flux coated wire feed or MIG?

That looks very strong. You shouldn't have any probems with the body tearing anymore.

What's next?

KT

Mine will look much prettier than that. I like large burned holes and big gobby fill in.
Joe

I am using solid wire with Ar/CO2 I didn't clean up the welds before taking the pictures. I will do that tonight after I ground down the welds in the wheel wells tonight.

What's next? Engman stiffening kit of course

Whoops, just for clarification those swaybar brackets are Tarret pieces, not Engman. I have the Engman inner long kit - that is the next project