Got my subframe fixed
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Old School Crew
Joined: May 2000
Posts: 5,251
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Got my subframe fixed
Ok, it wasnt' a $20 Job, but from about 7 pm to 4:30 am we were working on designing, fabricating, and installing, then improving and then reinstalling my new subframe/sway bar/impossible to rip out subframe.
A guy in one of my classes and myself befriended each other got to talking and we have a lot in common, military and cars. So we're tlaking one day about cars and I mentioned how frucked up my rear subframe was, said he could do what I was describing what I wanted done and had the equipment to do it. We figued out a decent price, about $20 an hour or something.
-We put the car up on the lift.
-Dicovered the place you screw the mount onto for the sway bar bracket it just a square nut tack welded at each corner, thats why they tear out so easily. So we figured that out fast. Looked at the other side and it too was cracked, just not ripped though.
We took a while figuring out exactly how we wanted to go about doing this.
-Scraped some of the insualtion off the area first to get a better peek.
-Sanded the area down to bare metal for better welding.
made a cardboard cutout of the shape of the metal we wanted
-found suitable sheet metal (3/16" thick diamond pattern steel ie: outside walkway steel - ended up being incredibly strong, hard to cut and drill etc)
-Cut our basic square out with a saws-all device, used a bandsaw to get a more distict shape.
-Cleaned the metal of rust, coated it in rust preventing/converting spray
-We welded the steel plate onto the subframe which was difficult because the subframe would burn though easily, that and the insulation was always catching fire.
-From there we drilled two holes, one on each side of the sheet of metal, (which covers the entire subframe) and though the old subframe and put a bolt through just in case the entire welding decided to go (not likely, but its even stronger now so whatever) So if the weldings decide they aren't strong enough, there are two big bolts holding this thing on too.
-Then we had to fabricate new mounts for the sway bar, since the stock mouting stuff was brittle, broken and useless to my new front plate/rear subframe mounting thingy.
We took some squared/box steel cut about 2" off x 2 boxes.
drilled the apprpriate holes.
-Cut some crushtube/hollow steel piping to add more strength to the steel boxes, then welded those into the steel. Now we could really torque the bolts down w/o worrying about crusing the hollow steel boxes.
-Drilled the bottom hole straight though the steel, and mouted the bottom bolt tight with a nut on the end. The top is tapped directly into the steel.
-Sanded all the welds down to look pretty -- or close enough.
-So we now have a new steel plate acting as a mouting point thats welded to the front.... errr back of the rear subframe. We have new custom mounts, everything out of steel. At the same time we also have fresh weldes and a lack of insulation in the area.
-We took spray rubbarized coating and strategically sprayed the whole area down and its all nice and pretty and black now, and won't rust.
All that work, which I helped a bit, not much it was his shop, and a lot of it was one man work... anyway he says ok 3 hours(we worked for about 10 hours, maybe 8 of actual labor) of labor, $35 an hour --- $105 ... cool, its not the $20/h I thought he said, but we also worked though the night and my car is awsome and its exactly what I wanted so $105 is cheap for the work and works for me.
I wish I had brought my camera with me, unfortuantly I forgot.
I do have pics though, although since they were taken at 5:30 in the AM, its kinda dark, and all the underframe is black...
The welding the steel there suprised us by acting as a lower rear tie bar... The car handles incredibly well, no flexing at all in the rear. It feels like its a new car, it has a new spirit. My buddy who did the work, Mike races 1st/2nd gen RX-7's... when he took the wheel --- WOW! I didn't know my car could handle like that. I was comforitable with him driving my car hard, very hard - but it coulda done so much more. He wasn't going to drive stupid with me in the car, he's got brains, as far as not killing passengers.
So for $105 I got my car fixed, and handling better than ever before.
A guy in one of my classes and myself befriended each other got to talking and we have a lot in common, military and cars. So we're tlaking one day about cars and I mentioned how frucked up my rear subframe was, said he could do what I was describing what I wanted done and had the equipment to do it. We figued out a decent price, about $20 an hour or something.
-We put the car up on the lift.
-Dicovered the place you screw the mount onto for the sway bar bracket it just a square nut tack welded at each corner, thats why they tear out so easily. So we figured that out fast. Looked at the other side and it too was cracked, just not ripped though.
We took a while figuring out exactly how we wanted to go about doing this.
-Scraped some of the insualtion off the area first to get a better peek.
-Sanded the area down to bare metal for better welding.
made a cardboard cutout of the shape of the metal we wanted
-found suitable sheet metal (3/16" thick diamond pattern steel ie: outside walkway steel - ended up being incredibly strong, hard to cut and drill etc)
-Cut our basic square out with a saws-all device, used a bandsaw to get a more distict shape.
-Cleaned the metal of rust, coated it in rust preventing/converting spray
-We welded the steel plate onto the subframe which was difficult because the subframe would burn though easily, that and the insulation was always catching fire.
-From there we drilled two holes, one on each side of the sheet of metal, (which covers the entire subframe) and though the old subframe and put a bolt through just in case the entire welding decided to go (not likely, but its even stronger now so whatever) So if the weldings decide they aren't strong enough, there are two big bolts holding this thing on too.
-Then we had to fabricate new mounts for the sway bar, since the stock mouting stuff was brittle, broken and useless to my new front plate/rear subframe mounting thingy.
We took some squared/box steel cut about 2" off x 2 boxes.
drilled the apprpriate holes.
-Cut some crushtube/hollow steel piping to add more strength to the steel boxes, then welded those into the steel. Now we could really torque the bolts down w/o worrying about crusing the hollow steel boxes.
-Drilled the bottom hole straight though the steel, and mouted the bottom bolt tight with a nut on the end. The top is tapped directly into the steel.
-Sanded all the welds down to look pretty -- or close enough.
-So we now have a new steel plate acting as a mouting point thats welded to the front.... errr back of the rear subframe. We have new custom mounts, everything out of steel. At the same time we also have fresh weldes and a lack of insulation in the area.
-We took spray rubbarized coating and strategically sprayed the whole area down and its all nice and pretty and black now, and won't rust.
All that work, which I helped a bit, not much it was his shop, and a lot of it was one man work... anyway he says ok 3 hours(we worked for about 10 hours, maybe 8 of actual labor) of labor, $35 an hour --- $105 ... cool, its not the $20/h I thought he said, but we also worked though the night and my car is awsome and its exactly what I wanted so $105 is cheap for the work and works for me.
I wish I had brought my camera with me, unfortuantly I forgot.
I do have pics though, although since they were taken at 5:30 in the AM, its kinda dark, and all the underframe is black...
The welding the steel there suprised us by acting as a lower rear tie bar... The car handles incredibly well, no flexing at all in the rear. It feels like its a new car, it has a new spirit. My buddy who did the work, Mike races 1st/2nd gen RX-7's... when he took the wheel --- WOW! I didn't know my car could handle like that. I was comforitable with him driving my car hard, very hard - but it coulda done so much more. He wasn't going to drive stupid with me in the car, he's got brains, as far as not killing passengers.
So for $105 I got my car fixed, and handling better than ever before.