Cracked Frame Plate Template (1 Viewer)

[jellis]

I've been tracking down the source of my wobble, I've checked all the usual suspects a few times over but never looked closely at my frame. Well, it was cracked as all get-out:

Engine side cracking

• jellis
• Sep 17, 2018

There were two completely loose chunks of metal in the photo above, I could tap on them and hear them click!

The wheel/steering box side had a few cracks as well, including the entire bottom weld on the panhard tower to the frame:

Steering box (wheel) side cracks

• jellis
• Sep 17, 2018

What an awful, stupid design on Toyota's part. This absolutely should have reinforcement from the factory, there is a ton of stress concentrated right here!

Since I'm an engineer, I drew up some templates in my modeling software and iterated the design until I like the fit I was getting using paper cutouts. I cut out reinforcing plates from 1/4" steel because that's what I had on hand. I got everything down to bare metal using a wire wheel on my grinder then I plasma cut/filled/ground all the cracks I could easily reach (which unfortunately was not most of them).

Below is a link to my template files in PDF format. They were made for my RHD HDJ81 however I think they should work for LHD applications. Hopefully this saves someone some time in the future!
Dropbox - Frame Weld.PDF

Here are the 2 separate plates I made for the engine side being welded on (not really enough room to make one single piece):

Plates on engine side in progress

• jellis
• Sep 17, 2018

...and here's the plate for the steering box/wheel side ready to weld on:

Wheel side plate ready to weld

• jellis
• Sep 17, 2018

The finished product after being painted with 3M undercoat spray:

Engine side painted

• jellis
• Sep 17, 2018
• 1

Wheel side painted

• jellis
• Sep 17, 2018

Unfortunately this did not cure my wobble. It's probably 30-50% better and it definitely changed the speed range but did not eliminate it entirely. It would have been nice to rib out the panhard tower to the frame better, but that's a bit complicated to do. However, the cracking on the engine side was certainly caused by this tower and my flat plates only do so much to shore up that area (it's difficult to get close in there due to the tower mount itself). I'm not sure if the remaining wobbling is caused by flex still happening in this area or not, I'm going down the road of troubleshooting other issues and will update this thread if/when I finally get the wobble solved.

 

[Proven]

Is there another thread that talks about everything you've done up to this point? I just had a wobble on my Camry that was solved by Tie Rods being replaced.

 

[jellis]

I actually haven't done anything yet to correct the wobble because I haven't found anything obviously wrong in my checks of bushings, TREs, etc. This was the first step I've taken beyond checking everything a bunch of times. I had real death wobble once and after that I had a loose wheel bearing, loose leading arm bolt, and a bent drag link. However, those were all caused by the death wobble (as evidenced by the fact that fixing them cured death wobble but not the general persistent wobble). After fixing these cracks and still having the wobble I believe that this cracking was likely caused by the wobble as well.

I'm getting the tires road force balanced today and while I'm there I'm going to check my caster as well (I have a 6" lift with Slee correction plates but the PO did this and I have no idea where the caster is actually at). I will update this thread with my eventual conclusions/solution.

 

[inkpot]

What size/ brand tires are you running? Some are a bit more round than others. Have you tried replacing your steering stabilizer? I was getting some wobble this summer so I went thru all of the usual suspects, including the panhard brackets, but none of these were guilty. Replaced my steering stabilizer and wobble is gone.

 

[jellis]

I'm on 17" rims with 37" tires, so balance is a big requirement. I have two brand new Cooper AT3 XLTs in front, two older Wrangler MT/Rs in the rear. My stabilizer checks out fine, it's OME and seems to push/pull with equal difficulty. It's low on my list because it should de-amplify vibrations instead of amplify them. The cracked frame could definitely allow vibrations to amplify: Now that it's fixed and everything else checks out, it's worth re-pursuing the cause of the vibrations. The large rotating masses on each hub are the most obvious vibration cause, and I know from experience that changing tires/rotating tires/swapping a buddy's 35s on made a huge difference in the vibes.

So yesterday after 3 HOURS in the shop the Road Force Balancer came back and said all 4 of my rims were bent. Considering that I've had 3 other shops do tire balancing on these rims in the last 6 months, including my neighbor/buddy who works at the closest shop, I found this conclusion incredibly bizarre. I was about to order new rims but then I thought, what are the odds of having ALL 4 rims bent that badly without another shop picking it up (albiet with a different machine, but still)? Something seems off.

So I looked into this more and came across the lug-centric vs. hub-centric balancing requirements. Lots of folks have had many issues with multiple hub-centric balance jobs getting nowhere and a single lug-centric balance job solving all their problems. As an engineer it makes a hell of a lot of sense to me that this would cause all sorts of problems/inconsistencies/errors. The wheel manufacturers mostly don't care where the center of the hub hole lands on a lug-centric design because it's not relevant to the fit/function of the rim, they probably don't even have a runout or concentricity tolerance between the hub hole and outer rim edge because it's just a thru hole and it's at the very center of the rim so offsets won't cause balance issues. That is, unless you use that "floating" hole to center your rim for balancing!
This is a much more elegant explanation for how every single rim could show up as bent. So I called the Road Force shop back and sure-enough they did a hub-centric balance instead of a lug-centric balance. But he was very, very certain the rims were incredibly bent, no doubt about it the bends were very obvious. I said, "Wouldn't a normal balancer pick this up?" and he said, "You would think!" So I called my buddy who just balanced them last week on his Coats, he said no way they are that bent or he/the machine would have noticed. But he's also only doing hub-centric because he doesn't have the adapter to do lug-centric.

I found a shop near me that can do lug centric balancing but I can't get in until next week. I'll update this thread with my results.

The Road Force shop did take out the equalizer beads my buddy put in, but they couldn't balance my "bent" rims so now I'm rolling on 37s that are entirely unbalanced. Surprisingly the vibrations are now much less severe than with the beads in, but now they do not stop at higher speeds (65+...this makes sense because higher speeds are where beads are the most functional). So now the vibrations are probably half what they were (so 25% of what I started with when I had a cracked frame with the beads in) and are now to the point that it's just annoying vs. "WTF is wrong with my rig?"

This process reminds me of a great Kurt Vonnegut quote:
“Every passing hour brings the Solar System forty three thousand miles closer to Globular Cluster M13 in Hercules — and still there are some misfits who insist that there is no such thing as progress.”

 

[Dindu Nuffin]

Vertical welds in high stress areas of the frame will crack.

 

[BILT4ME]

Vertical welds in high stress areas of the frame will crack.

Would it help to "anneal" these areas and stress relieve them with a torch in order to change the Heat Affected Zone (HAZ) by getting the surrounding area to +400F? and slow cool with heat blankets?

Should they be pre-heated before welding?

 

[Dindu Nuffin]

Couldn't tell ya, but you know he didn't do any of that. I just know that a vertical weld across a frame rail is wrong and will crack, especially if there's a lot of stress on it. To do that properly would have involved fish plates and the removal of a few more structures (sprint perch, tubular cross member mount, ect) to add the plates before welding them back on.

Or, he'll get lucky and it'll be fine.

 

[jellis]

Toyota has a number of vertical welds across the frame in that area, there wasn't cracking at any of them. Whether or not a specific weld angle will cause cracking vs. another depends on the type and direction of loading, etc. The main problem with this specific spot is that there is a huge lever arm/bracket attached to the panhard that is welded mostly just to the flat face of the frame beam without much else support from other faces. Combined with the holes drilled/welded for the steering box mount there wasn't a lot of metal on that face to support the huge sideways vibrational/fatigue loading. As was mentioned, ideally I would have removed the entire panhard bracket and put the plates underneath it in addition to adding more brackets to support it on more than just that one face. Basically all I did was throw a plate over all the cracks and hope that it strengthens it enough to hold up--but the panhard mount itself is still mostly attached to that original cracked metal which is not ideal. But there's only so much time in life and I've yet to see or hear of anyone going through that level of effort on this fix.
It will likely be fine for the rig's lifetime, I added 1/2" of metal overall to the thickness of the frame in that location between both sides. Most importantly the tubes for the steering box are now connecting both plates which should add a tremendous amount of lateral strength to the member. I did purposely make the vertical welds on the plate edges offset so they don't occur along the same frame cross-section which should make a huge difference in the long run. I probably could have kicked them out another inch or two, that wouldn't have hurt. But if the frame cracks at the edges of those plates, it will be much easier to fix than the original cracks! And at that point I'll cut it all out and redo the whole damn setup properly.

I took my sweet time doing the welding so everything could heat up as evenly as possible. That said, this also isn't an application where human life is on the line. I design auto lifts for one of my clients and I can assure you that the Chinese manufacturers aren't using special annealing techniques on all the welds that were holding my ~6,000lb rig above my head when I took these photos. I know that's true because I do not specify special techniques on the drawings for these parts, it's not necessary. However, they also don't see the kind of vibration and fatigue that a vehicle frame does, especially when you design your component interfaces like an idiot.

 

[jellis]

Just to update: I finally made it to the shop that had the lug-centric adapters for their tire balancer (normal balancer, not road force). My wobble is now entirely eliminated!

I'm not sure if it's the new Cooper AT3 XLT tires on front or the welded frame but it definitely wanders much less around the road (I'm voting that the cracked frame was the biggest culprit). I can now dare to look away from the road without worrying about careening out of my lane!

Super awesome, this is the best my truck has ever driven!

 

[Joe Link]

Thanks for sharing the template @jellis!

What's the best way to print it with the correct scale?

 

[jellis]

Stupid me, I should have put a dimension somewhere so you could check with a ruler!!! I just updated the drawing with dimensions on the second page so you can print & check the size. I'd try it at 100% scaling and tweak as necessary. When the dimensions measure as stated you're at the correct size.

Since I'm here I'll update and state that this did not entirely solve my wobble problem. Another problem I discovered was a frozen bolt holding the rear of my left hand control arm in place which prevented proper tightening. I fixed that but a wobble is still present sometimes. I had my alignment done, that helped as well but it's still present at times. Overall I've noticed that tire balance plays probably the biggest role in this, as in I can get my tires rotated and balanced and it will now be literally impossible to drive at points and it takes a few more balancing jobs at different shops to get it right. I'm going to try replacing my rims next as a few shops have mentioned that they are bent.

 

[Joe Link]

Awesome, thank you!

I'll be doing this to address a crack in my frame (and hopefully prevent it from happening again).

 

[Delta VS]

Stupid me, I should have put a dimension somewhere so you could check with a ruler!!! I just updated the drawing with dimensions on the second page so you can print & check the size. I'd try it at 100% scaling and tweak as necessary. When the dimensions measure as stated you're at the correct size.

Since I'm here I'll update and state that this did not entirely solve my wobble problem. Another problem I discovered was a frozen bolt holding the rear of my left hand control arm in place which prevented proper tightening. I fixed that but a wobble is still present sometimes. I had my alignment done, that helped as well but it's still present at times. Overall I've noticed that tire balance plays probably the biggest role in this, as in I can get my tires rotated and balanced and it will now be literally impossible to drive at points and it takes a few more balancing jobs at different shops to get it right. I'm going to try replacing my rims next as a few shops have mentioned that they are bent.

Have you raised the axle side rear panhard attachment point by any chance? 6" is a LOT of lift to have with no geometry correction. You mention having it aligned a few times, what is the caster when that is done?

 

[jellis]

Caster is +1.3 left and +0.8 right.

I did not do the lift, I bought the truck this way (MISTAKE). Rear panhard axle attachment has not been raised. That could help?!? That's a new recommendation.

I haven't replaced TREs although they seem fine, and I haven't replaced any bushings because they also seem stiff. Everything else in the death wobble checklist is done including trunion preload.

 

[jellis]

It's worth mentioning here that there's some great photos of a body-off frame weld fix in another post which would be ideal:

Death wobbles... Steering box with excess be a cause?

Whats your castor set at .On my Rubicon it would get death wobble until I rotated the axle back with adjustable upper arms.now of course the Toyota doesn't have that , but there are ways to increase the castor other then just the offset bushings. castor plates and or the offset trunion...

forum.ih8mud.com

 

[Delta VS]

Caster is +1.3 left and +0.8 right.

I did not do the lift, I bought the truck this way (MISTAKE). Rear panhard axle attachment has not been raised. That could help?!? That's a new recommendation.

I haven't replaced TREs although they seem fine, and I haven't replaced any bushings because they also seem stiff. Everything else in the death wobble checklist is done including trunion preload.

Factory spec caster is 3*, +- 1* (so a 2-4* window). You would definitely benefit from some additional caster, BUT you are in the zone of possibly getting pinion angle issues when overcompensating caster. Too little caster is absolutely going to give you some wandering steering. We have many customers who spent countless dollars fixing their front end in an effort to track down a wandering issue, only to install one of our panhard lift brackets and have the problem completely go away. THAT BEING SAID, with a RHD vehicle, it's going to have a little less of an effect, but will still help. LHD rigs have panhards attaching to the frame on opposite sides of the vehicle, this leads to more of a twisting motion of the body as you go over bumps than you experience with a RHD rig. More reading in first post here: Delta Vehicle Systems Panhard Lift Bracket, 3" & 5"

eimkieth also makes a weld-in bracket, but I don't know if he has an appropriately sized kit for a 6" lift.

 

[jellis]

Wandering isn't so much a problem anymore as death wobble. I already have front/rear DC shafts so pinion angle should be OK even if I increased caster. Regardless, after reading a lot of other death wobble posts it appears as though ~+1 degree of caster isn't likely causal, even if slightly higher would be ideal. I mean, I should probably swap out all the wear components first.....

 

[Delta VS]

Wandering isn't so much a problem anymore as death wobble. I already have front/rear DC shafts so pinion angle should be OK even if I increased caster. Regardless, after reading a lot of other death wobble posts it appears as though ~+1 degree of caster isn't likely causal, even if slightly higher would be ideal. I mean, I should probably swap out all the wear components first.....

All good points!

 

[jellis]

I just discovered that Black Mamba actually makes pre-made plates for this, and at a reasonable price! This is definitely the way to go:

80 & 105 Series Steering Box Chassis Repair Plates - Black Mamba Racing

Toyota Landcruiser 80 Series Steering Box Chassis Repair Plates

www.the4wdshed.com