Crossmember Bars POLL

[nlowe79 at gmail.com (Nate Lowe)]

On 6/17/05, Dan Smith <sad_rocc@yahoo.com> wrote:
> It's nice to see people discussing and analyzing the bar rather than just saying it's >useless but come on, we're not talking about a space age subframe for the next >Challenger or anything. Does it work? Maybe, I'd even go as far as to say probably. It's >worked for Tobias definitely.

I don't dispute this. If fact, I'd agree that the bar looks like a
winner from what has been observed so far.

>Those endplates are big hunks of expertly welded steel. Sure, someday
they may fail. But >if you're abusing your car enough to make them
break, I'm sure you'll have replaced plenty >of other parts before the
bar. It's quite possible that there could be areas for design
>improvement but don't fix what isn't broken.

Failing doesn't mean only breaking. I was referring to that curve on
the end plates, that would be the weakest link and the first place the
bar would bend (if it ever did). If that plate were to bend it would
cause the bar to put the crossmember into constant tension, not the
best situation for a cracked piece of metal. If this is a possibility,
then I don't consider strengthening that area useless improvement. It
would be easy to do some calculations to find out what kind of load
over what period of time would make that plate bend, no rigorous
testing involved.

> Like I said, if you want to argue the theoretical merits of 2 degrees more bend here or a >slight sizing change there, cool! 

You might be surprised how much of an improvement 2 degrees might
make. Again, only a few calculations would be needed.

> Dan - overworked, stressed and tired of the insane amount of nitpicking lately (and not >just this topic)

I'm sorry it came off as nitpicking, but I don't think people trying
to give help to improve a product that will benefit many of us is a
bad thing. Hell, some of this is trying to help you figure out if it
even needs improvement, which is still uncertain.
Nate