Hello all,

just relating my weekend experience, and urging people to check carefully.

This weekend I was at my race shop, getting the new chassis worked on for the new racecar. We were putting in a rear suspension console brace. I have the motor out and the engine bay half ready for paint, so I have looked it over closely and did not notice any problems...

On the inner wing, where the swing-arm nut goes, we burned the paint off to prep for welding the brace. Under the paint, you could clearly see the cracks that had started. This was not visible with the paint on. This is a low mile shell, with no rust, and it has never been on the track or had sticky tires..... SCARY...

This is the 3rd console I have personally had that failed. All on the right side for some reason. The first 2 were 10years back on a racecar before I knew about the need to brace this area.

so look carefully people....
brant

Brant, can you post some pictures of the cracks? I'd like to show them to my autobody guy when he repairs the rust near my suspension console.

Sorry,

I don't have a digital camera... (or a computer).
I mooch time on the computers here at work, and every month I blow the budget on car junk instead of a camera....

(much more fun to buy shocks and machining than sony)

The area that this one was cracked in is the 4inches around the swingarm nut... all on the inboard side of that console tab.... my other failures were not caught so soon, so by the time they failed metal was ripped much more significantly...

Its the lateral forces on the swing arm that tear out these consoles, and the tears start at the mounting hole.

The interesting thing was that you couldn't see the cracks until you took a propane torch and wire brush and removed all of the paint...

good luck, sorry for the lack of pictures.
brant

Thanks for the (clear) information. I'm gonna take a very close look at my consoles later on today.

Can you describe the reinforcement you are adding? Also, are you going to replace the console or just build up the area?

thanks,
dr

dr,

On the previous 2 consoles, I replaced them completely. This time since there was only a crack, we tig welded it and then added a plate over the area and welded that also.

This will probably come out a little wordy.. sorry I don't have a camera.

I own 2 cars with braces and they are both different styles of braces. The basic concept is to add a brace that goes from the entire suspension console... forward to the motor firewall. The lower half of the firewall is doubled walled and stronger, so the brace is rougly parellel to the ground. Both of mine, have braces that are joined to the firewall mounting point with an aluminum turnbuckle (3/4inch aluminum tube that is threaded on both ends.. see hoerr racing) This has a heim joint screwed in to each end of it. Thus the brace is removeable. Note that the angle of the brace from the suspension console wing, is different for a 4cylinder car versus a 6, as the valve covers on a 6 necesitate this.

The car I had worked on last weekend, contains some additional solid welded bracing to the wing, and the plates mentioned previously. Pictures would help... sorry about that.

Some times people make these braces out of solid tubing, and someone will hook up a link to the san diego PCA rule book which has a diagram of a version of this.

It is my strong opinion that a brace of some sort is absolutely necessary for a track car. And last weekend showed me that a rust free street car will tear out also. The first 2 consoles I trashed were on a drivers ed car with 205 tires. That chassis had all of the welded in reinforcement plates, but none of those plates really reinforce the console wing enough from the inboard direction.

hope that helps some
brant