question about crossmember mods

[Hoxviii]

I finally got my 205 in place and have a question about the crossmember.

Before i started I knew I would have to adjust the member, but looking at it i came up with an idea and i want to see if anyone has any reasons why it wouldn't work.

The crossmember underneath the tranny goes all the way across between the frame rails. What I want to to is cut the crossmember just to the drivers side of where the tranny mounts and actually get rid of that half of the member.

I then want to take the crossmember gusset that is now "extra" and flip it upside down and mount it immediately to the drivers side of the 205 with a piece of 1/4 plate that will bolt to the frame, the gusset, and then the three holes on the DS of the 205.

__
/ |::CASE::<----- something like that.

Any reason this wouldn't work? Allow too much movement possibly? Good idea? Anything?

Justin

[rabidranger]

If I understand what you are talking about I wouldn't recommend it. There should be no direct mount of the tranny or t-case to the crossmember/frame, needs to go through a rubber bushing or the tranny mount to absorb load from the powertrain. The motor, tranny, and tcase all sit on rubber bushings, nothing is hard bolted directly to the chassis. You might induce stress cracking under load in the tcase. If you are going to do what you say, I would figure out how to a put a bushing somewhere in your scheme.

[Hoxviii]

there's going to be a rubber bushing between the part that mounts to the T-case and the piece of 1/4 plate.

Justin

[saf-t scissors]

What you're describing sounds more like a motor mount setup.

You'd have one leg coming in from the passenger side and grabbing the transmission at the trans mount, and another leg coming from the driver's side grabbing the 205 mount.

Still doesn't sound like a good idea. That crossmember is there for structural rigidity as much as anything else.

If front driveshaft clearance is the concern, try moving the crossmember back a few inches. That usually fixes the problem.

[Hoxviii]

That's exactly what i was thinking of doing. I figured the tranny member was also in there for rigidity, but had to ask just to be sure. Back to the drawing boards.

Justin

[saber6]

Why don't you just make a new crossmember out of 2"x4"x0.120" box tubing? I did it on my F250 and it works great. That way if the front driveshaft was the issue, you can custom make the crossmember to clear it all.

[Hoxviii]

I've figured out what i'm doing.

I'm cutting the crossmember just to the drivers side of the tranny, just to the PS of the driveshaft hump, and right in the middle of the driveshaft hump.

The part of the hump i'm going to weld back to the crossmember just to the DS of the tranny and then weld the flat piece in at the bottom of the hump to fill in the gap.

Rather than having a half circle looking thing it'll be a half oval looking thing. I'll weld reinforcement plates in place and call it good.
--------------___-------------_
From this:\_/ To this: \___/

Justin

[fordperf351w]

my original one looked like this for the 1356

now in the way

new design

[Hoxviii]

i originally considered bridging up and then realized the shift rails would be in the way. I'm trying to go down as little as possible and considered something like fordperf did, but i want something a little cleaner looking. Hopefully i can get a picture up when i'm done, but it should look rather stock in the end.

Justin