Technical Draglink and tie rod material

This topic came up in another forum and I'm curious what the fabricators here are using.
DOM, Chrome-Molley, 7075-T651 aluminum or a stainless for draglink and tierods.

 

I use 7/8" dom

 

Aluminum? I like material that will bend if you smacked something on the road.Aluminum likes to crack ,and separate .

 

I use .120 walled dom, regardless of o.d.

If I use a weld in bung, I turn the I.d. of the tubes to fit the bung and only deep enough for the bung to fit. I also drill a hole thru both side of the tube where I machined the I.d and plug weld bung thru both holes then around end of tube and bung.

I like being careful and the heavier wall doesn't flex as easy as some of the cheap "tie rod/drag link" kits.

I always wondered how many driving issues (death wobble/shimmy) could be partly to blame due to rod flex.

 

.156 wall DOM

 

DOM and if I use bungs, I also plug weld them.

 

A long time ago I read a book written by a fellow who his own portable welding service for 30 years , one of his contentions was that welding around the diameter of a tube was destined to failure , that if joining tubing , cutting at more than 45° yielded a larger weld area and didn't create a stress area in the tube , even better if you could fish mouth a sleeve and weld that up , again , staying away from welding around the diameter...

 

I've welded a "truck-load" of carbon steel and chrome moly piping, using a socket AND consumable inserts. Many X-ray quality. X-ray nor dye penatrant(PT) ever showed up stress cracks. Maybe we B talk'in bout something different?!
6sally6

 

1" chrome moly. I like light and strong.

 

In theory .156 wall 7/8" DOM is directly threadable for 5/8 ends. But there can be some variation in a wall thickness, so I prefer to use .188 wall and drill to size for whatever thread I need. I don't mind tie rods and drag links being a bit heavy.

 

The gentleman who wrote the book said that the tubing was failing next to the weld ( IIRC the structures were in an amusement park in n Cal) and by sleeving the break and welding the fishmouth the problem was averted ,sounds reasonable , simply passing along the info ......

 

Interesting, it would be cool to see someone test that.

I always 45° bevel the ends of the tube and actually try to bevel the bung alittle. So I end up with a wide deep weld bead. In this case I don't mind knocking off the high spots of the welds.

 

In the past when I've joined square tubing sections , instead of square cutting the ends ,if I have enough material , I cut the ends at a 45° angle , an old farmer told me that way was stronger probably 45 years ago ,, we were extending a field drag ...

 

If you use chrome-moly you should use ndt for cracks.


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Thanks for all your responses!