Had a little fun with the box and pan brake tonight. I’m starting to make the beginnings of the body mount pedestals that will weld to the recently completed floor crossmember, and had to start somewhere.
I had already removed the passenger side cage and nut assembly from the old crossmember a while back, so I already had all the pieces to graft them into the new one. I chose not to reinvent the wheel and make a new cage and nut assembly from scratch, I like it when en-gin-ears do all the hard work for me ahead of time. Besides that, I want to try and create something that looks like GM could’ve made it by using some of the original parts.
Here’s part of the old assembly sitting on the body mount bushing:
This is just a lower locating flange of sorts, it was spot welded to the underside of the crossmember, then the crossmember had a hole in it above this, and the cage and nut assembly was spot welded inside that.
The conundrum I have is that the cage and nut assembly has to sit in a rectangular shape simply due to the spacial requirements and physical size. But as my planned new pedestal goes up towards the new crossmember, it’s actually going to have to have one of the sides on a 45 degree angle to clear the pipe.
So what to do?
Pretty simple really, make the base rectangular as needed and make the one side an angle as required. So I needed to make a rectangular box with a top on it (to fill in the gap that will be created by having one side a 45) and this is what I did:
Got my shapes cut out in the dimensions I needed, and cleaned up all the mill scale from the edges that will eventually get welded:
Next I drilled the holes like factory for the body mount bolts to go through. I made the pieces for both sides at the same time, easier to do it this way than create only one and then try and remember what the hell I did when it comes time to do the other side. I also ran these pieces through the bead roller with the tipping die on it and put a light crease along the top’s bend lines. This will make it a little easier to bend when the time comes:
Here’s the cleaned up and repaired cage and nut assembly ready to go in. Can’t weld it in yet though as it would’ve interfered with making the bends in the brake.
Marked out exactly where it had to go ahead of time…
…it’ll reside in here like this.
Bent all the sides beginning with the long sides first, then did the ends.
Folding the top over on it would be the last step, so next I positioned and burned in the cage and nut with a couple of rosette welds.
The top is a little tricky, the most you can bend it in the brake is 45 degrees because the rest of the box hits the brake fingers.
This is why I rolled a slight crease on this bend line in the bead roller. I threw a couple of tack welds on the sides by the top to maintain the shape and strength, then coaxed the top down into position with the body hammer. And voilà, we have a box with a top on it. Could also double as a cigarette case if you like!
😅
Underside:
Here is the locating flange in place where it’ll get welded to the underside of the box, essentially just duplicating what the factory did with the original crossmember, but with ends and a top.
Quickly set it in place on the bushing, and it looks like it’s going to work out just fine.
As I said, this is merely the beginning. Now I have to weld up all the edges and corners, dress the welds, and start planning the vertical portions to tie into the crossmember.
Fun little project for the evening!
D.
