On 41 06/24/07, neal zimmerman wrote: > Doug , hows come u used tubing for your reinforcement gussets on z-bar > and not just pieces of 1/8 or 1/4 plate in triangles. thats not tubing, its 1/2" steel rod. why did I use it? figured it'd be stronger, but that was a guess. flat stock would work too.., flat stock is super strong in one direction and weak in the other direction, or at least not as strong. not being an engineer, I didn't know which way force would actually be applied to the gusset when in use, so I choose rod, which can be have force applied to it from any direction and still be just as strong. I knew I had made it strong and took out all the flex when the pedal housing under the dash started moving around,, showing me it was now the weak link. on my 64 Dart 170, even with its lighter weight 9.25" slant six clutch, I tore 2 z-bar's up before I started gusseting the snot out of it's z-bars. in those cases: 1) the wall of the tubing cracked and tore and 2) an arm broke at a point where there is a scallop taken out of it from the factory (for what reason???) I also strengthened the area where the z-bar body pivot bolts to the inner fender apron with sheet metal doubling up the thickness. I've seen these get pretty tore up. ---- Please address private mail -- mail of interest to only one person -- directly to that person. I.e., send parts/car transactions and negotiations as well as other personal messages only to the intended recipient, not to the Clubhouse public address. This practice will protect your privacy, reduce the total volume of mail and fine tune the content signal to Mopar topic. Thanks! '62 to '65 Mopar Clubhouse Discussion Guidelines: http://www.1962to1965mopar.ornocar.org/mletiq.html.