re: Milano/75 center cross member

[Joe Elliott <jee@domain.elided>]

I'm sure some Porsche-driving goon will call me ignorant for this 
attempt to help Zamani as well, but here goes...  If you can be sure 
that the new cross member will be strong enough, I think you're fine. 
I'm well aware of the problems with Shankle swaybars, but I think 
that's totally different because a swaybar is designed to flex, and 
the appreciable stiffer bar transfers a lot more force to the pieces 
that eventually fail.  Unlike a swaybar, the center crossmember 
doesn't flex visibly under normal operation--it's designed not to 
flex at all, so the pieces of the car that it attaches to are 
designed to have the entirety of any forces applied to the 
crossmember transfered to them.  So theoretically, there won't be any 
more forces applied by the crossmember on anything it attaches to.  I 
fear that I'm not explaining myself very well, but it has to do with 
the fact that a swaybar is designed to flex and the less it does, the 
more force it applies to stuff, whereas the cross member isn't 
supposed to flex in the first place, so making it stiffer can only 
help (e.g. no one ever worries about damaging their car by installing 
a strut tower brace).

At 4:02 PM -0500 10/29/01, alfa-digest wrote:
>Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2001 12:13:25 -0800 (PST)
>From: Zamani Zambri <zzambrimail@domain.elided>
>Subject: Milano/75 center cross member (under the car)
>
>Hi,
>
>Ok more crazy ideas. I'm using a 2.5" exhaust system with a single 2.5"
>exhaust pipe. So the problem is the center crossmember makes it
>impossible for me to get a better ground clearence. I was thinking of
>having a custom center crossmember fabricated from thicker gauges steel
>and also make provision for more exhaust clearence. I think this will
>help to stiffen the chassis as well. What do you guys think?
>
>My only apprehensions are that if I make it too stiff, it will start
>ripping apart other stuff, case in point, the shankle front sway bars
>(rips off the stock sway bar mounts) and the shankle rear sway bars
>(potentially will destroy the stock endlinks).
>
>Zamani
>'87 75 3.0
>Make a great connection at Yahoo! Personals.
>http://personals.yahoo.com

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