DeTomaso Mailing List: April 99, Message #128

At 22:42 -0500 1/4/99, gonancy@juno.com wrote:
>    Boy, am I MIFFED!    how come in two page ad in the POCA newsletter
>it's $149 for the rear upper braces without the diagonals and on the 
>other page where you get all four braces for $850 the upper rear 
>brace with the diagonals is $199?
>$50 bucks for two 8" pieces of tubing?? They're not even welded to the brace!!
>They're in the bottom of the box and not even painted or notched for
>attaching to the other pieces!  And I gotta get the paint off the 
>other pieces to weld them in and paint em again.
>Sh*t!

Indeed... I called Hall after I had everything in and asked what the 
heck the two tubes were for. He said they were 'sort of an after 
thought' and as you say, I'd have to cut and fit and weld to install 
them. I've got them cut and shaped, but I still don't have them in. 
It's bound to add further rigidity, but I'm concerned at how 
difficult it will be to remove the entire assembly when you need to 
pull the engine or tranaxle. It'll be a case of loosening each 
turnbuckle a little at a time and then hoping you can pull all four 
bolts out.

>    And the lower front brace, doesn't it bolt in by the lower A-arm
>studs like the lower rear? In Kirby's little discourse he mentioned 
>plug welding it in.

Nope. If you look (as I assume you have by now), it wouldn't fit that 
way. I did use the center plug weld hole though as a bolt hole. 
Drilled a hole through the chassis on each side and then used a large 
bolt with washers on both sides to hold the entire thing in. This 
allowed me to drive to the welder's shop without worrying whether or 
not the entire lower front brace would fall out on the ground... The 
remainder of the holes were used to plug weld.

>  I can't think of anything else right now since I got my blood pressure
>up.  When S.O. and I try and install the darn things this weekend 
>I'm sure I'll have more questions.
>And there are on instructions, not that I expected any.

No instructions. Just a one sheet, poor photocopy of each brace 
installed. You can hardly see anything in the pictures, so it's a 
case of using your common sense. It's pretty obvious. The upper lower 
rear was one that had me scratching my head a lot though... How high 
or low to put it, how far forward or back? In the end, I placed it as 
low as possible and as close to being opposite of the arm mount. 
Keeping it low meant to me that it would stay out of the way of my 
trunk bucket. And it seems to.

Hope you had a good weekend installing it!

Regards,

Kirby

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
Kirby Schrader                       kschrader@slb.com
                                     kschrader@earthlink.net
'71 Pantera #1661
'78 Longchamp GTS #3001 Waiting patiently for a new hood and fender....
'90 Thunderbird 35th anniversary special
http://members.tripod.com/~kschrader/index.html