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just make a jig and use a drillpress to drill thru holes in the end fittings for the allthread bars, a jig for a bandsaw to cut the endpieces and allthread to length, and a jig to hold the piece at the correct angle while you weld them. The bushings and the inside of the end tubes are the only thing that should really need close tolerance, and you could make them slightly tapered to lessen that. Use a press with a stop to press the bearings in and you can control the width of the end sections. How are you threading the center section, lathe? I'm a mechanical engineer and have machine time on lathes, mills, etc and have built machines, axles, bushings, etc so know what's involved. It just doesn't look to be anywhere near the labor or tolerances involved as the Stealin' design where you have to cut your sheet metal sections, control you bend radius when you bend them, weld the box sections together, make sure they fit inside each other(one of my first Stealin' arms wouldn't move), drill hole paterns, weld(?) nuts on the inside, etc. Not ragging, just seems like the setup time and cost of NC might not be worth it for a lot of the parts, and the small production run(relatively). One last thing, how confident are you that the aluminum bushings(at least that's what they look to be made of) will hold up? Those arms take quite a beating in compression, especially at the load bearing areas of the pivot bolt. I have Stealin' upper arms with urethane bushings, Eibach springs, and a host of other stuff up front. One of my Stealin' arms had been squeking, so I pulled it off to clean it up real good and all. When I removed it from the inner mount I found that the inner arm mounting bracket holes that the pivot bolt went thru were very egged out. Like 1.5 diameters. Anyway, that was in steel, and aluminum is softer(granted depends on heat treat, etc), so I'm just wondering how well aluminum bushings will hold up. Once again, NOT a flame, just a heads up on some wear in that area that I noticed.
Mike ------------------------------------------------------
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