K member question

BrianT said
That last half a sentence is the understatement of the week. A drunk monkey could have welded better than the guy who built my K member! I wonder why no company has offered a reinforcement plate for this yet, or have I just missed it. I probably would have welded one in when we went through the K member last year.

You can buy a reinforcement kit from Firm Feel. They offer a reinforcing "service" where they will weld up your K and reinforce it, but I know that a few people have just bought the kit with the reinforcing plates. It includes reinforcements for the LCA pivots, the strut rod mounts, and the steering box mount.

You can also just make them yourself. I bought a reinforcement kit on eBay that had come from Firm Feel, but after looking at it I made up my own when I did my 2nd K member, just using the patterns from the kit and some steel plate. You can make the LCA pivot reinforcements by cutting down a plain steel, heavy duty washer. Just don't get the zinc plated kind. You could also use a hole saw to cut one out of some mild steel plate, so you don't have to worry about breathing any of the plating that might be on a standard washer if you can't find the plain heavy duty kind in your area.

Vitamin c said
Id guess that the factory K members were welded by a robot in a jig and not a human.

Nope. Not that I can tell anyway. Not nearly enough consistency for a robot. The K's I've looked at were all welded differently. Most had welds where they needed to, but how much weld, and the quality of the weld, varied greatly. That wouldn't be the case if it was automated, even back then.