Well heres another fab job since no company has decided to build a double hump crossmember with a torque arm mount on it. Essentially i took a spohn t-56 swap crossmember and cut out the middle with the mount and welded it to the bottom of hawks double hump crossmember

 

You sure that's all going to fit? I made a double hump crossmember for my car and wound up having to make a completely separate crossmember just for the torque arm. I know the tailshaft on my cobra trans is different than the gm version, but it still doesn't seem like there is room for all that including an exhaust pipe. Hopefully it does fit though.

 

Yea we test fit it under the car by bolting it in under the hawks piece and it clears everything like it should. ill dig up the pics and put them up. As for pipe clearance its not as high as it could be but still way better than using spohn's crossmember.

 

heres pics of the test fit before the piece was welded

 

That's good it all fit. I guess mine is shaped even more different than I thought.

 

torque arm and crossmember all bolted up with no rubbing at all. Next step is routing the exhaust. pics to follow

 

ARG... another one with the TA mount hanging off cantilevered, not sure why people keep doing this (vendors also), since it eventually screws up the frame where it bolts in.

 

Hi, I sent you a PM about the crossmember. Which one did you get for the black crossmember the LT1 or the LS1 T56 and year?

I am thinking of doing the same as what you did to yours.

Let me know thanks.

 

Any update? Really like to see it done. Ü

 

Nicely done. I think I'm going to do the same thing when the time comes for my LS1 swap. I've got a y-pipe now around my Spohn piece, but its not something I'm satisfied with. I'm also considering ways to beef up the weaker crossmember to endure the torque from the cantilevered mount.

BTW, I've run the Spohn crossmembers with both a TH350 and T56, made many dragstrip passes and 2 Power Tours, and so far no damage to the frame.

 

Man seems like you just made a whole lot more clearance. Wish I could do this to my Sphon t/a but don't have that much fabbing skills and don't want to buy more pieces lol.

 

got rid of my TA years ago. when the car was still brand new..

still wish they made a mt with more room..good job

 

a decoupled torque arm has acceleration and braking benefits, but i agree that it needs to be mounted to the car in a different way that wont tear up the subframe or underbody.

 

do you have any proof to back up this statement?

 

Would also like to see pics of damaged uni body frame were the tranny cross member bolts too. I am in the process of building camaro for mainly drag racing and would like to beef up that area now if it does suffer damage. thanks

 

personally I've never heard or seen proof of it tearing up the underbody. I could see maybe that it would stress a factory type mount that uses the two bolts per side. but the few I've seen utilizes all three holes on each side for the transmission crossmember. which the stress on 6 bolts would be minimal. under acceleration it would stress the front bolts more under deceleration it would stress the rear bolts. if you're worried about it, I suppose you could build a brace that takes the torque arm off the granny crossmember.

it could be the de-coupled part that he has a problem with, I'm not sure. maybe if one of those bolts broke or something. not really sure

 

As in having spent a night welding together a friend's formula frame rails after that kind of setup ripped both threaded reenforcing plates through the bottom of the frame rails.

yes, I've done that, not sure if I still have pics, will have to look

 

How's this:

 

BTW, that actually looks a lot better than it is, when we unbolted it it was broken in so many places that both frame rails completely fell apart, and you can tell that the damage isn't from anything else, there isn't even any rust on the cracks in the steel...

 

Wow, never seen that before. T-top car? Higher HP motor or what?

 

Hard top formula with a mildly modded TPI 350, probably capable of being a low 13second car, maybe high 12's but I don't think the owner ever got it out of the 14's. Mostly a street car, never autoxed and I think the only time it went to the dragstrip was when I dragged him there with me.

This is also one of the cars that I've posted about in the "my car wheel hops" threads... the owner swore that his suspension was perfect and he was still getting wheel hop. I checked it out and yep, the suspension was fine but I could grab the tailhousing of the tranny and move it up and down (and when I did bits of the frame rails fell off). Welded it all back together, re-designed the crossmember and the wheel hop went away.

 

I was going to get a TA mount attached to my crossmember as well but I had a buddy talk me out of it for the same reason. You gotta look at where these crossmembers mount to the car, where the trans mounts to the crossmember, and where the torque arm mounts to that. There's a lot of leverage there between where the bolts are in the frame rails and the plane where the torque arm is bolted in, especially with a T56 where the trans mount is further removed 2 inches farther back. It puts even more leverage against the factory crossmember bolt holes.

I just stayed with my factory torque arm mount. Relocating it to the crossmember isnt worth it. relocate it to its own crossmember or leave it where it is - on the trans.

But a LOT of guys run those crossmember mounted TA's... and dont have problems, so your mileage may vary, it may even work beautifully. But I decided against it, and I never even saw an example like what 83TA just put up.

Out of curiosity, 83TA, where did you put the torque arm mount after that? Is there a way you can put it on the crossmember to minimize the forces it sees? Or did you build a separate crossmember for it or something?

 

I've seen 3 break, but that one was probably the worst.

since I had access to both sides I bent up some 11ga reenforcing plates that were fitted inside the frame rails before the bits and pieces that were left of the original were welded back and then ground down, it basically looked stock when it was done. the existing crossmember was also so it wasn't as likely to flex and rip the frame open like a can opener, but I can't seem to find the pics (those pics are 10 years old)