[Cautrell05]

It is currently licensed and I have probably put probably 5 0 mi on it just around Town driving cruise nights and whatnot. Both rear axles are bent bad enough I don't trust them at highway speed so till I get the rear end out and gone through it it's not going to be seeing any extended driving. Right now it's pretty much in Mobile mock-up mode. It's roadworthy enough I can test things out and make sure it's going to work before I fully finish everything in.

I could write a chapter book on everything I've done to that front crossmember. Some of it was worth it some of it I'd maybe do different in the future. The biggest and hardest modification was making a tunnel through it for the steering shaft. I roughed in my original hole enough to get the rack mounted and steering shaft run a while back but then it came time to close up the excess holes and make it to where I trusted it. What I ended up doing after looking at it for half an afternoon trying to figure out how to piece it together was just cut most of it out, and make a big scary hole and then fill it back in. The front edge / radius of the crossmember is a piece of 3/4 in solid round bar that runs all the way from the outer frame rail to the bottom center of the crossmember just inside of the control arm bolt. I took a piece of ready bolt at home bent it to the pattern I needed and then brought it into work and used the torch to heat the round bar and then bend it right where I needed. Once the front edge was where I liked it all the missing sections were cut out of 3/16 plate and weld it in. There are several pieces inside boxing the crossmember, basically making a channel. It's not just the top in the front piece that you see. There's enough material there welded in that I'm pretty sure it will never fail. It is also a metric crap load of work that I don't know if I would do that part exactly the same again just because the amount of work involved.