Seymour Snerd
Lifetime Supporter
I'm sure that a U shaped brace would great, but bending a somewhat thick piece of steel is beyond my skill set. By the way how thick a piece of steel should I use?
I'm not all that sharp when it comes to steel. How does brazing differ from "welding". Also, is the GT40 tub brazed, welded or maybe both?
No worries, either method will work. If I were just making the triangular plates I'd probably use 1/8", probably overkill, but you want to do this only once. This means you might have to lengthen your bolts by as much as 1/4".
Oh, wait: the width at the crossmember and the width at the shock are different on the front side; hence the gentle fold in the original. So now you are eighter bending your plates or your are spacing them away from the shock mount. OK I guess. Use a stack of washers?
I'd really like to hear what "the factory" has to say about this. But a fix like the above will certainly get you on the road again.
Sidebar: The technical definition of brazing is joining two pieces of metal, not necessarily the same material, by melting a dissimilar metal (eg steel to brass with silver). In the case of the GT40 that would be joining steel to steel with bronze. Welding, OTOH, is joining two similar pieces of metal by melting them together, with or without the addition of melted metal of the same kind. Typically steel is joined to steel with the addition of steel "filler", but you can join steel to steel just by melting them both together. So spot welding is an example of the latter.
How you decide whether to braze or weld in any particular situation, and what you use as a filler metal, is somewhere bertween a long magazine article and a batchelor's degree subject
I don't know the total answer for the SPF tub, but I know that there is a mixture of spot-welding and brazing. If you take a file or some sand paper to any of the "welds" you see and it looks bronze colored, it's brazed.