FINALLY found some smaller size tubing, not the enormously beefy and heavy .250 one I had planned on using before.

I cut myself two pieces, and they fit neatly hmm right on the very inside of the rocker panels, following the body lines, straight tubing.

So they don't hook up to the LCA's at all, should I make some brackets or something or just weld them to the floor boards ?

They tuck in so neatly, so I doubt one will be able to see them at all from the side once they're installed.

 

I wouldn't bother doing it, if you're only going to brace the sheet metal, you leave the weak point in it.
Make sure you tie the rear sub frame (easiest spot to access is the LCA mounting area), to the front.
I'm afraid I don't have a picture of my... hmm, brainfart... ahem, hawkwood? whatever that brand is... They're a very simple design, so they'd be easy to replicate. And they work, so...

 

you have to tie them into the subframes or they will be use less sheetmetal won't work waste of time and money

 

But isn't the majority of SFC's that way though ? They go on the side, and then they connect to the LCA's by using very heavy brackets ?

 

They DO hook up to the rear lca mounting bracket and also on the front "frame rails." Everyone is responding to you stating that you were just going to weld them into the floor and not tie them into anything strong. You said you had straight tubing and were going to weld it to the floor. DO NOT do this. All you are doing is adding dead weight. You MUST tie it into the "frame rails" at the front and back on each side of the car.

 

So I can run it in the position I was planning on, but just use front and rear brackets ?

 

so ANYWAY....

yes, thats exactly how most of the good "subframe connectors" are.


really, we dont have a rear subframe, and anyone who says otherwise, is wrong.. LOL.
im not going to waste time debating it because... well im right.




yes, run them along the structure of the car.. AKA THE FLOOR... tie one end in by the LCA mount...
you'll also want to make two arms that branch out to the front subframe assembly...

what you're really doing is stiffening the entire floorpan from twisting... the goal of making the car structurally stiffer has very little to do with "tieing in subframes together" unless you're talking about a diffrent car then a 3rdgen...



everyone who disagrees, go look at any of that parameter style subframe connectors... and before you tell me im full of ****, go ask yourself how many 3rdgens you've driven with one, the other, both and none... i can almost guarantee i'll have driven more.

[/azshole commentary]

 

Yes I was going to install them, with brackets to the LCA's and some point up forward, and later on have several pieces of tubing going from the SFC's in towards the center of the car, trying to do the diamond brace thing.

It'll be a very tight fit, getting tubing between the floor pan and the catalytic converter, but it'll fit.

 

on Spohns, he necks it down to a smaller tubing size, but if you're careful, you can leave it the fullsize....
worse case, heat up and bend the exhaust...

make the exhaust fit the chassis, not the otherway around.

 

I'm thinking about taking a pic of the tubing I'm going to use, next to something of familiar size, like a Coke bottle, so you guys can see the size, since I'm wondering if I could use the same size tubing to make a 4 point roll cage.

 

EXACTLY! Whenever I hear someone modifying their SFC's to fit the exhaust, it makes me scratch my head...

Yea, so using brackets, or whatever you like, tie it to the rear LCA mounts (I don't think anybody said rear subframes, but whatever, we all know what part of the car we're talking about, so it's not a huge deal...)
and to the front subframes, via a bent tube, or angle cut pieces of tube. If you tuck it up high, and want to weld it to the floor boards, go nuts, it'll probably help a bit.

Diamon brace? interesting, I vaguely know what you mean. Be sure to take pictures if you can.

 

Diamond brace, talking about hmmm I believe it was the Kenny SFC's that were diamond brace ? Let me find a pic

Here ya go
Chassis Improvements


The double diamond style SFC's

 

Ok, you have me wondering… what are you getting at here? You don’t consider the bent up boxed section in the back that the suspension and other goodies attached to a rear subframe? How is it significantly different then the front that the K-member bolts to?

Um, you were out drinking?

Most of the structure of the car is in the rockers and the surrounding areas… the boxed subframes inside the rockers are basically just reinforced areas that are used to tie the suspension into the body or give you a place to mount things like the transmission mount (which incidently I don’t believe that area of these cars is in any way strong enough for what it does).

If you take a good hard look you’ll see that there is doubled, tripled… steel sections tying the rockers in to the front and rear structures with some formed gussets to help. The fact is that real world, anything that you can do to give this structure some dimension in any direction is going to help stiffness significantly. With simple connectors running inside the rockers, I’d bet that it would be hard to show a difference in stiffness with just an arm going across to the boxed section going back to the transmission, especially on the passenger side, since the floor is already more heavily reinforced in that area then others. GW never tied the passenger side into the boxed section, and you can easily jack one side of an f-body with GW bars on it by just jacking under the passenger side connector without any appreciable sagging at either end. Also, the better it’s tied into the rockers but the less it’s tucked upright against them, the more rigid the structure will be…

I do agree strongly that it’s easier and more functional to get the connectors worked out and tied in and then move the exhaust to compensate. I’ve found that a bottle jack, some 4x4’s and a concrete structure (foundation wall, steps…) to jack against will usually move the exhaust sufficiently out of the way to get most sizes of tubing past the passenger side of these cars.

 

im just going to go with "yes" and not bother reading the other 12 paragraphs.

 

On another car I used to work on, my best work happened when I had a cigarette in my mouth and some bourbon, in the nice summet heat, getting drunk smoking and getting a tan, while working with power tools

 

Most of that was directed at your like 20 previous paragraphs...