If y'all are tired of looking at front frame rails, too bad. There's still a good ways to go, but we're down to final fitment and welding. The most useful tool I have in my drawer is time, and I use it liberally to keep me moving ahead and avoiding as many mistakes/rework as possible
All the plates are welded, blended, and required only minor refitting to account for shrinkage. The Cleco holes all still line up, which is a good sign. I also went ahead and added a gusset to better transition the shock tower to the outer frame plate. Acute angles like that on a structural area bother me.
Why go through all this effort to expand the front rails? Here are two photos to illustrate. Before:
After:
The section height at the critical connection is about 2x from factory. While the inner fender sheetmetal does transfer loading from the front rails to the firewall and the rest of the unibody, it's not up to the task by itself given the handling goals for the car.
Final task is prepping the rails for welding - making sure the control arm hardware doesn't interfere with the lower plate and welds, grinding the uneven flanges on the upper part of the rail, and making sure I seal up the new frame shape from any water intrusion. Just taking my time, mocking up, and setting up the weld sequence.
Busy week ahead of day job stuff, but I'm grabbing the hours where I can.
David