rear suspension console (near) failure, found my 3rd one! Options

[brant]

Hello all,

just relating my weekend experience, and urging people to check carefully.

This weekend I was at my race shop, getting the new chassis worked on for the new racecar. We were putting in a rear suspension console brace. I have the motor out and the engine bay half ready for paint, so I have looked it over closely and did not notice any problems...

On the inner wing, where the swing-arm nut goes, we burned the paint off to prep for welding the brace. Under the paint, you could clearly see the cracks that had started. This was not visible with the paint on. This is a low mile shell, with no rust, and it has never been on the track or had sticky tires..... SCARY...

This is the 3rd console I have personally had that failed. All on the right side for some reason. The first 2 were 10years back on a racecar before I knew about the need to brace this area.

so look carefully people....
brant

[brant]

Sorry,

I don't have a digital camera... (or a computer).
I mooch time on the computers here at work, and every month I blow the budget on car junk instead of a camera....

(much more fun to buy shocks and machining than sony)

The area that this one was cracked in is the 4inches around the swingarm nut... all on the inboard side of that console tab.... my other failures were not caught so soon, so by the time they failed metal was ripped much more significantly...

Its the lateral forces on the swing arm that tear out these consoles, and the tears start at the mounting hole.

The interesting thing was that you couldn't see the cracks until you took a propane torch and wire brush and removed all of the paint...

good luck, sorry for the lack of pictures.
brant