Third times a charm...

[gono]

Anyone done something once and thought.."this will work great, I thought of everything and i love the way it looks"? well, I did, TWICE! So hopefully this will be the last time. Thoughts and comments are welcome to keep me from steering down the wrong path again.

This is the second attempt in which I fixed my first thrashing of notching the rear of my 55'. So some quick thoughts on this fix was..
- I should give my self plenty of room to mount the air bags on the axle, I won't want to use the bed anyway so who cares if I make 12" notch.
- I doubt the handling truck will change much if I mount the bags close to each other.





Here's the beginning of a fresh start.

[OrrieG]

never mind, did not see the 4 link at first.

[_Ogre]

looks like your setting it up to lay frame, the body on a tf truck hangs 6'' below the frame
keep that in mind when you set it up.

[gono]

Fabbed up the trailing arm brackets


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Got the rear half welded in


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Need to finish weld the trailing arms and weld in the bag mounts
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[Kim57]

Looks good.
Kim

[gono]

Finished up the front trailing arm mounts and fabbed up the upper bag mounts.





Here's how it will look...for now.

[Kim57]

Those came out nice.
Kim

[gono]

Thx. Can't tell you how much easier fabrication has been since buying a plasma cutter!
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[coralhead]

Only one trailing arm per side now? I would be leary of mounting the airbag in the middle of the trailing arm like that. You may be asking for trouble with the arm getting bent there if you take a shockload to the rear axle or wheel. Then again I may not be right. I have not seen one setup like this.

[indynick]

Great job on the fab work.

[mknittle]

Originally Posted by gono

Thx. Can't tell you how much easier fabrication has been since buying a plasma cutter!
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yeap. the more you use it the more you like it!

[gono]

Originally Posted by coralhead

Only one trailing arm per side now? I would be leary of mounting the airbag in the middle of the trailing arm like that. You may be asking for trouble with the arm getting bent there if you take a shockload to the rear axle or wheel. Then again I may not be right. I have not seen one setup like this.

I was thinking the same thing when I came up with the design. When I calculated the trailing arm size I used a conservative deflection of L/360. The trailing arm length is 36". I assumed a static point load in the center of 1500 lbs (conservatively high since the actual load is 12" from the axle). I ended up with 1 5/8" diameter 1/8" thick, also conservatively thick. I probably could have used 1 1/2" but I actually like the look of the thicker tube. One thing I did take into consideration is the airbags themselves. They are, by their design shock absorbing. So I made an assumption that the actual shock of hitting something in the road would be dampened by the airbag and the shocks. of course this is all trial and error. I wanted something different so I'll find out once its on the road!

[coralhead]

With only one trailing arm per side what is going to keep the rearend from rolling/pivoting at the axle connection?

[gono]

I'm still in the process of fabbing a wishbone.
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