OK, a couple of posts back I said I still had another step to accomplish to finish these truck arms. In order to taper the arms toward each other at the forward end I need to make a cut just ahead of the axle brackets. Once again I enlist the use of my chop saw. In the picture below you can see that I have disassembled the axle brackets from the arms and made a cut through 3 sides of the arm - inside, top, and bottom. Shortly after taking that photo I made a second cut right next to the first to open the kerf wider.:HMMM:
After cutting, I used a series of clamps and some short pieces of lumber to clamp the arms side-by-side and force the arms to bend at the kerf cuts. The reason I clamped them together was to insure that they were bent to the same degree. (Another method would be to tack-weld them together [top-to-top or bottom-to-bottom], bend, weld the cuts, and then cut them apart.) Once satisfied with the positioning, I welded the cuts.:rolleyes:
After welding I ground the top and bottom welds smooth. The side weld was just smoothed enough to allow a gusset plate to be welded over it. I used 1/8 inch thick flat stock cut in a 2 inch square and positioned diagonally. After welding I used a soft wheel to remove any lumps from the welds and touched up the primer. The last pic below shows the finished truck arms together on the floor. With the axle brackets parallel to each other, it is obvious how the arms now taper toward each other at the front end.:3dSMILE: Next step will be to mock these up in position and fabricate the front brackets.:whacked: