This week I finished the transmission cross-member (almost). I started by finish welding all the brackets and doing a final fit check in the car.
Once the fit was good I welded up the front side and drilled all the holes for plug welding.
It took several hours to get all the welds completed and the holes drilled, longer than I expected. It took about an hour per side to get each bracket welded in. Overall, it was pretty easy just time consuming.
I cleaned it up a little but it will be under sound mat so I didn’t really need to.
Great to have the tabs and doubler plates welded in.
I cut out the webs for the cross-member with the Makita grinder and a .040 disk one at a time and smoothed them up with a flap wheel. It would be nice to have a band saw but I don’t have the room in my garage.
I ended up with one cross-member mount just a little crooked so I had to fit the pieces one at a time.
Once everything was more-or-less fitted I just tacked it with the MIG. I forgot to turn the gas on so the tacks are pretty sooty!
Only thing left to do is finish the welds on the cross-member and it will be done. That should be an easy after work project, 1 or 2 evenings.
I am glad to have this behind me. This week I will move on to figuring out the radiator mount and core support mods. This should be a big job because there will need to be a bunch of core support mods to make it fit correctly. It will probably take at least 3-4 weeks (or more). I haven't even thought about how I am going to do it yet!