DOES THE HDK SUSPENSION K-MEMBER HANDLE BETTER THAN A T-BAR SUSPENSION?
After seeing this - Scott Gottleib's Road Runner...This was a Gerst kit. You will notice these have TWO tubular crossmembers. Maybe the welds aren't exactly right but the one that broke is the crossmember nearest to the steering rack and torsion bar. To me that shows the relative weakness in the design of these things for a handling application. You see the sway bar and the steering rack mount to this. There is a lot of left to right shear load and a pretty good moment arm on this.
I am aware the HDK has a lot more weld area and is supported in two axis against the logitudinal tubes but there is also only one crossmember with similar loads going into it.
The design of basically right angles with no triangulation or gussets of any kind puts huge stresses at this point in any of these. This looks more like it's a fatigue failure than it shearing.
After seeing this - Scott Gottleib's Road Runner...This was a Gerst kit. You will notice these have TWO tubular crossmembers. Maybe the welds aren't exactly right but the one that broke is the crossmember nearest to the steering rack and torsion bar. To me that shows the relative weakness in the design of these things for a handling application. You see the sway bar and the steering rack mount to this. There is a lot of left to right shear load and a pretty good moment arm on this.
I am aware the HDK has a lot more weld area and is supported in two axis against the logitudinal tubes but there is also only one crossmember with similar loads going into it.
The design of basically right angles with no triangulation or gussets of any kind puts huge stresses at this point in any of these. This looks more like it's a fatigue failure than it shearing.