Well, its not really a torque box, but I like to call it that since I don't know what
else to call it other than brace or floor reinforcement. Mine (of course) was crapped out and
(AGAIN of course) nobody repro's them.
I brought them to my fab shop and they wanted $400 to fabricate them!!! I almost crapped my pants.
Needless to say it was time to do them myself, but I was a little intimidated by the $400 price tag (must be hard, right?).
A Camaros.net poster PitStop Bill gave me some pics of ones he had done (well, satellite pics of them anyway)
I was inspired to build my own, so here they are in case someone else needs to make them and can use them
as a reference.
One thing that scared me was the curves of the original. in retrospect,
I didn't need those strengthening curves, I used a heavier gauge steel than the factory
so it probably works out to be the same. I went and got a 2X2 foot section of 16 guage steel
from a hardware store (you only really need a 14x14 inch section). The piece mainly consists
of three major bends, with the most important being the side that goes up against the frame
rail, it has to be at a 70 degree angle to fit right. I just traced everything out on the
steel section and cut it out using a air saw. I then bent it up and welded the side that
attaches to the inner rocker. After it was all bent up I made a section that the spring cup
bolts to and welded that to the unit.
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| Here is the original piece, notice the side where it
attaches to the rocker is all but gone |
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| Here is the first pass, basically it just has 3 bends to it and that
little divit on the top (in this pic, it actually mounts upside down) I put the divit in to
match the original, and it gives me a good surface to attach it to the inner rocker when
its installed |
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| Notice the flap to give that divit strentgh |
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| Here it is with the side mount for the spring cup welded to it. I made
that out of a strip of 16 guage as well, but I think PitStop Bill used
a rectangular piece of metal tubing |
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