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Nordic1
03-14-2005, 04:02 AM
For those who DIY'ed their LA, what did you use for link tabs? Did you plasma/cut and drill your own tabs out of plate? Box? Buy tabs from PS or one of those other shops? What worked best for you guys?

JeepinHank
03-14-2005, 10:06 AM
I'm basically making mine out of leftover 1/4" flat bar.

Actually its the side that I cut out of my box tubing to sleeve my frame rails.

If I need more, it will probably just be 3" x 1/4" flat bar. If you're making the axle side tabs, a hole saw is your friend. It makes cuting the radius for the tabs a lot easier.

Troy
03-14-2005, 10:42 AM
Cut mine form box tubing.

phillyzj
03-14-2005, 11:51 AM
i cut my spring pads from box tubing, my UCA tabs from 1/4" plate and my LCA tabs from BTF, their D60 tabs work well for an 8.8. The hole is 5/8" which is bigger than stock i'm sure they could make it a different size if you asked them.

Kraqa
03-14-2005, 03:23 PM
1/4" plate and a shear / angle grinder.

Nordic1
03-14-2005, 03:26 PM
I was playing with design ideas today and I think for hte most part I'll be using 4x4x1/4" box for brackets, the truss and boxing the frame while everything else will be 2x2x1/4.

Do I need to worry about material strength between cold rolled and holt rolled? Is there actually like a significant difference?

BMRisko
03-14-2005, 03:43 PM
1/4" plate, torch, grinder, drill press for the bolt hole

Krash80
03-16-2005, 04:23 AM
I cut all my brackets for both the frame and axle sides out of 1/4 plate using a vertical bandsaw. The bandsaw leaves you with a clean cut (as opposed to a torch...unless you're a torchgod like my neighbor) and it's easy/safe to work with and relatively quick.
Ditto to what JeepinHank said about the holesaw. I made all the radiuses in my axle brackets with metal-cutting holesaws on the milling machine. If you choose this route (highly recommended), get some decent holesaws cause you'll have nothing but trouble if you try to use cheap Ace-hardware ones like i did...some of them had almost 1/4" of runout they were so crooked.

You don't need any sort of special steel for what you're doing. If you have to buy it at a steel supplier, just tell them you need plain old ordinary SAE 1020 steel. FWIW, cold rolled steel is almost just like hot rolled steel after you've welded it anyway, since it's somewhat annealed by the heating from welding. You may get cold rolled anyway though if you use square tubing for your brackets, as many smaller square tubings are cold rolled, but if you are getting 1/4" plate, it will likely be hot rolled.

-Ron-

Kraqa
03-16-2005, 04:23 PM
cold rolled is EXPENSIVE but it spatteres WAY less when welding.