Dimple dies for the win. Look trick as heck, save weight, and keeps the section strong. You can buy them individually.
Could you make it strong enough out of aluminum?
Tom, reducing weight is something I'm working on now, I've already reduced the thickness on everything but the base plate and I know that will help allot. The stock cross member weighs 22 lbs. and my prototype weighs 36. The production model will weigh allot less, hopefully in the 20's. GM did an excellent job building a strong light member. Cutting windows in strategic places is a great idea and I'll defi look into. It will increase my cost, I pay by the inch on cuts. I'll get a price on it, if there are people willing to pay the actual cost passed down to me I have no problem doing it. I'll try to get something drawn up this weekend.
This was what I was getting at originally. If Brian ever looks in here again, maybe he could weigh that extra one he has and then we can compare?Have you looked into tubular Metals with mounting and base plate to see how it compares Landon?
Nice idea! Like this?Dimple dies for the win. Look trick as heck, save weight, and keeps the section strong. You can buy them individually.
Zfs cross members are different, I'm gonna build my own because it's actually bent up pretty bad from when ot was a co-op truck. With bolted engine mounts how much torque do you think the trans crossmember is seeing?
Thank you!Landon, I just noticed this thread is still in the SoCal section. I'm going to go ahead and move it to Evan's section since you are working with him on selling them.
ALOT. my old NBS 2000 1500 with a 4.3 and nv3500 liked to eat motor mounts and killed my trans crossmember/mount. apparently hitting 3ft-4ft whoops at 45mph for a few miles is pretty hard on that shit even with long travel suspension :rofl:
Lol I guess I was talking more for street application. But what about with bolted or poly engine mounts, wouldn't that keep the engine from torqueing as much therefore putting a huge stress relief on the trans mount? That's the other thing, the torque it does see the mount probably eats it up instead of the crossmember itself?
I guess I just know how much my engine torqued before and after I bolted my mounts, I understand what your saying James for sure. I guess I just figured with better engine mounts you could get away with a lighter duty crossmember.
Still working on this, the prototype fit an LMM but not LBZ,LLY AND LB7. Been busy with other projects also so it's tough to juggle time around. Sorry for the delay!