Saturday Night Racer

Saturday Night Racer
http://www.latemodelracer.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl
Saturday Night Racer >> RACE TECH >> Frame straightening
http://www.latemodelracer.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1273683577

Message started by Dietzsch_Racing25 on 05/12/10 at 9:59am

Title: Frame straightening
Post by Dietzsch_Racing25 on 05/12/10 at 9:59am

Anyone know some in the riverside area that will straighten a race car frame? Everyone I call seems unwilling to do it or really expensive.

CD

Title: Re: Frame straightening
Post by hogracer3d on 05/12/10 at 10:18am

Goodness, you would think Henry would know somebody

Title: Re: Frame straightening
Post by r8crj on 05/12/10 at 11:18am

get a hold of Dave at indian hills auto body.....he is a racer and has done ALOT of frame straightenings over the years....he is in riverside.

Title: Re: Frame straightening
Post by Dietzsch_Racing25 on 05/12/10 at 12:28pm

I was referred to Dave by someone else as well. He told me he didn't want to do it.

I got another referral for a guy in costa mesa but he's is a bit of a drive and seems expensive.

CD

Title: Re: Frame straightening
Post by dirtmopar44 on 05/17/10 at 5:20pm

If its bent in front of the steering i can fix it. Barstow is not that far and you can help. Mike

Title: Re: Frame straightening
Post by Andrew on 05/17/10 at 8:47pm

I do it with tractors, roll off trucks, chain binders and ratchet straps. Oh yeah, a tape measure is handy too. I'm in Simi Valley... a bit of a drive too, sorry.

Title: Re: Frame straightening
Post by Dietzsch_Racing25 on 05/18/10 at 10:19am

Thanks for the offers DirtMopar and Andrew.

I talked to a couple of places and they were giving me numbers that were about 3 times higher than I expected.

I decided to try to fix the damage myself. It was all in front of the suspension/steering linkage so it is really just a bumper mount. I figured if I F'ed it up I could clip it (which would still be cheaper than having it straightened).

So far so good. Seems to be going okay. I should be done by the weekend. So far I have about $60 in materials in it and by the I am done I will have about 12 hours in it (I work slow and spend a lot of time staring at it).

I have a couple of pics if anyone is interested. The damage wasn't as bad as I initially thought.

http://www.dietzschracing.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=82:050110-race-recap&catid=41:2010-race-recaps&Itemid=77

Thanks again,

CD

Title: Re: Frame straightening
Post by TIM_BEWLEY on 05/18/10 at 8:49pm

where is it bent looks fine to me LOL. once you have it all back to normal. double check your front suspenion. to make sure you are square. you know make sure your idler and pitman arms are parraellel with each other. just reminding you so you don't over look it. good luck

Title: Re: Frame straightening
Post by hogracer3d on 05/18/10 at 10:04pm

We had one almost identical to that one once, just cut it off and sectioned it from a donor car used a trammel bar to square it and welded her up, barely tell it was there.

Helps to have a known cherry one close by, to verify square, plumb and level

Title: Re: Frame straightening
Post by Dietzsch_Racing25 on 05/19/10 at 8:17am

I scaled it, checked the alignment and measured (as best I could) after the crash and everything checked out. I will check it again after I am done to make sure I didn't inadvertantly change anything. Thanks for the sound advise Tim.

The bumper sits level (at least while on jack stands) and I have room for the radiator again.

CD