Trailing arm refurb;...

[MIG Wielder]

Hello All, One little job I've been doing is to refurbish my spare trailing arm. Now I've previously pressed the old rubber bushes out and wire-brushed it clean before I send it in for powder coating and in the area where they can break up I can see a line down the metal work . I think this is a pressing mark from where it was manufactured. But I'm not sure. I'd hate to have another broken one.
What do you think please ?
Thanks ,
Tony.

[TrustNo1]

Looks like a stretch mark from the pressing, and thats not quite where they usually break its nearer the crease slightly to the right where its thinner.

How much are you normally charged for powder coating a part like that, I've been asked to blast and coat some similar parts but as i normally only do stuff for myself and friends I've no idea on how much is reasonable to charge?

[MIG Wielder]

Hi Justyn, Thanks for that. The informal arrangement I had was that I would clean up the arm as far as possible before they quoted as the inner section of the pressing is difficult to clean out. The cleaning and prep; is half the battle.
I'll let you know how it goes.
Thanks for your opinion on the press-tool marks.
Tony.

[new to this]

I would reinforce the Trailing arm

Dave

[cleverusername]

I would reinforce the Trailing arm

Dave

I would be very careful about doing that, unless you really know what you're doing. If you make one part of a chain of parts stiffer of stronger, you move the point of failure elsewhere. The other issue is a badly done reinforcement will create a stress riser that will make a failure more likely.

[tamtrucks]

ideally these rear arms need complete make over using thicker material but keep same measurements so they look like for like....bl or leyland made on the cheap cheap 70`s teas up!

[Carledo]

ideally these rear arms need complete make over using thicker material but keep same measurements so they look like for like....bl or leyland made on the cheap cheap 70`s teas up!

Yes i've seen cracked and broken trailing arms, who hasn't? But i've seen far more failures due primarily to corrosion than I have to overstrain and these seem to be, in the main, on track, or very hard road use cars, that have been polybushed throughout. I even took a busted (rotten) one off a 1500 auto recently, I can't think of a softer life than that in terms of strain! But rot is no respecter of model!

My own Carledo has probably some of the hardest worked trailing arms of any Dolomite anywhere, with 140odd horses on tap, frequent track work and, the REAL killer, lots of linelock controlled static burnouts on the dragstrip. The car only has Poly on the rear end of the trailing arms and the arms are the 73 originals (Ziebarted when new) I've not strengthened them and they are still in perfect shape.

So, once again, my advice is, if it ain't broke, don't fix it! Just check your arms now and again for rot! Getting them cleaned up and powder coated, as Tony is doing, is probably gonna go a long way to ensuring his arms have a long life. I also agree with cleverusername, if you stiffen that initial failure point, you don't cure the problem, you just move it somewhere else!

Steve