Hmmmmmm........Threaded
rod on both sides but one's an inny and
one's an outty...so to speak |
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So
obviously there was some "repair" work done at some
point in the past........at least 10 years in the
past before I bought the car.
Left side has
been drilled & threaded |
Right side is the
way it should look |
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I was a
little too quick in saying that the right side is
the way it should look..........after I looked at
the mount a lot closer.
A crack on the
bottom and.............. |
A crack at the
top |
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I'm still
undecided exactly what I'll do to repair this.
Fellow TR6 friends have looked and suggested leaving
the left one alone and just use a grade 8 bolt and
some Locktite seeing as the the thread job was very
nicely done. On the right side crack, I've been told
that a skilled welder could grind the crack out,
stop drill, and weld the cracks in place. A wide
bead around the top mount is the way to repair it.
Then box in both of the front mounts.
The
gussets were made from 1/8" steel using a
pattern
downloaded from the VTR web site. What I found was
that each bracket is just a little
different............I guess it depended on the guy
welding the brackets to the frame.......so I ended
up grinding each gusset to fit a specific bracket.
The end result was a gusset that just barely fitted
alongside the bracket, effectively leaving a "V" for
a bead of weld to lay in.
There's
aren't too many welders doing "house calls" in my
neck of the woods but Tim's Portable Welding came
highly recommended and he was a local guy to boot.
Besides that he returned calls, came by to review
the work and give an estimate and he showed up on
time to complete the work in less then the quoted
time. He fixed the bottom crack, got a bead about
75% of the way around the top of both pins, got
between 75% & 95% coverage on the outer gussets and
100% on the inner gussets. My bank account is $200
lighter but it's a repair that I'll never have to
worry about again.
This is his truck
with the small 12K watt generator. His other
truck has a 15K unit |
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Tim, the welder,
hard at work under the car |
Now I need to
paint it with POR-15 |
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It's just
about a year later (12/2008) and Tim is back boxing
in my rear mounts and re-enforcing the "U" channel.
I had an intermittent sound from the rear of the car
all summer and I wanted to see if the new Nissan
differential had stressed any parts like the rear
mounts or the axles. So I dropped the diff and, even
though they look OK, had the rear mounts boxed in.
I'm also installing Goodparts'
brand new CVJs to replace my old hubs and axles.
But more on that later.
Each side of
the mounts got a top to bottom plate welded
in and then the "U" channel
got a piece welded between the mounts. |
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