Hi all

I crawled under the back of my Baja today, long story short the LHS frame horn is bent.
I went rock crawling in my Baja on Saturday and was having alot of trouble with excessive axle tramp. Seems that this tramp has bent the framehorn.
The gearbox is a stock mid 60's swingaxle and the floorpan is a '72 superbug rearend. Because the frame horns are dished for the CV's they aren't as strong as the earlier swingxle framehorns.
Combine this with 31" tyres and a lifted swinger tramping badly and it seems you can bend the framehorns with a stock 1300.


The horn has been bent downwards. The metal underneath has rippled and cracked slightly

Here a a few pictures.











Was is the best method to go about repairing this?
Everyone please post any thoughts/ideas/experiences on this.

Any help most appreciated



Smiley

sorry to hear Daniel ...

hopefully she'll be back on the road in tip top shape very soon.
My 67' baja i had when i was full noob (17 yo) had a cracked l/h frame horn that came with the car. it was cracked open on the top and explained why the engine and box was sitting crooked. With little money and experience, i disposed of it and bought a granny spec 69' for $500 less than i paid for the 67 bomb.

cracked frame horn (full of sand):




I blamed a hard past life in combination with a stoned bogan's definition of a gearbox strap (from from the norm, bunnings chain and tensioner):

Weld plates on it to strengthen it, then fit a set of Kafer bars maybe?

you may need to find some smaller rocks to crawl over next time

you could always do what nills did after he wasnt happy with a standard baja

No easy repair IMO

Remove trans, with heat and a jack and hammer or whatever else you may need straighten the fork, weld the crack and strengthen with doubler plate stiffeners but I go the Nils route in a serious baja, support the frame horns from the full roll cage and engine cage and this will never happen....1.3 liter or 3 liter !!

I was thinking. Pull everything out (engine/transaxle/etc)

Make a cut in the framehorn like this



Unpick the spot welds, remove the bottom half of the framehorn from the cut back.

Straighten the top half so it's right, weld a new bottom framehorn in place (I have plenty of spare pans I can cut up)

Then plate the underside from strength and fab up a kafer bar setup to keep things in shape. At least until I get the IRS conversion done.
Can everyone pick holes in this idea please?

I'd love to go the full Nils approach, but the car is my daily driver and gets driven every single day.



Smiley

Iwould resist cutting out the damaged area and as Matt has said just repair the existing damage as in doing as you have suggested , this will then give you 2 spots that need to be doubler plated to reinforce a welded frame horn as opposed to just one doubler plate to repair the existing horn .
Oh and if you havn't already done it , weld in some frame horn support bars from the top bars down to the bottom bars on your engine cage as close to the shock tower as possible but not as to obstruct the swing axle or the soon to be CV's ( Better be bloody CV's soon , or a decent donk according to Baja Dave ) and put a nice joint with plates etc and high tensile bolts near the bottom end for easy removal of the engine cage without removing shocky bolts etc

why don't you just drop the whole pan and bolt up one of your spares that you have cleaned strengthened and painted, surely it could be done with a few mates and a couple of cartons of beer and inone weekend?

Cut out bad section, fabricate anew one and weld it in. Easy, just takes time.

Yeah great Daimo......and where do the CV's go....

you need to be very carefull welding material that is a structural part of the car, you can weld in patches but if you weld it incorrectly it will just crack next to the weld as there is a fare bit of flexing in the frame horn's, if you weld up the crack you will need to drill a small hole at each end, this will stop it migrating further, keep in mind that the material around the crack has work hardened and will probably crack again

Quote:

Originally posted by matberry Yeah great Daimo......and where do the CV's go....

Quote:

Originally posted by hellbugged Quote: Originally posted by matberry Yeah great Daimo......and where do the CV's go.... Yeah yeah just for an idea on what can be done..thought it might get smiley thinking

just look on page 4 of nicks drag junka for some modified frame horns...i couldnt be bothered explaining the obvious at the time so just put up the pic for some inspiration of whats possible
Seems it was deemed no good so i took it off
Your work is good is sure youll fix it up

Problem solved!!

http://forums.aussieveedubbers.com/viewtopic.php?tid=80275&page=17 


Smiley

Guys, I guess anything you repair will be prone to rust.

Newt