Hornet Frame

Wonder if anyone ever found a cache of those frame rail repair parts or if Hudson only made them to order for body shops repairing monobuilt cars that were in fender benders??? There's been discussion on the board before about repro-ing rear frame rails.

I have a pair[L&R] of the frame rails from front to back. They were crash repair parts and would probably not be to hard to reproduce. But who do you trust with these,not to lose or ruin??:eek:

I'd trust Bent Metal!



If you've seen the pictures of his work - its outstanding!



Of course I can't say he'd be interested in the project, but if it's anything "metal" I'd think he would be.



Having patterns and the ability to reproduce these particular parts would be the "Holy Grail" for Hudson restorations, hot-rods, flower planters etc.

Reproduction of discontinued metal parts is an everyday on-going activity in the aircraft industry. Aircraft fuselages are basically a UNI-Body frame with metal wrapped around it... sound familiar? Most aircraft replacement pieces are based on engineering which is resurrected and sent to metal fabricators to produce the part. But, really obscure pieces (May I compare to Hudson frame rails?) are usually the result of "reverse engineering". Reverse engineering is not a new or unusual practice. Many metal fabricators use this process as the basis for short run custom piece production. The basic reverse engineering will include careful examination of the original part followed by creation of mechanical characteristics engineering drawing that captures those characteristics. Besides the tried and true engineering drawing capture, there are several other special means to get the reverse engineering completed. One of those is laser lithography. This method uses an original piece... many times a used part, as the basis from which the process derives engineering needed to reproduce the part. Think of this process as a laser scan of all surfaces of the original part. The laser scan is a very precise measurement of the part which is converted into a 3 dimensional wire frame engineering model. That wire frame can be input to existing engineering and computer controlled manufacturing tools and interfaces. The beauty of this system is a metal fabricator can use this type of input to create the end product. Further more, the availability of this engineering to automated fabrication businesses allows that business to insert the manufacturing of the part into existing production schedules.



The point of my dissertation is: Clutch guy has the NOS OEM parts; the tools to capture the engineering characteristics of the parts are available. Once the capture is complete, the ability to produce the pieces is assured. Using this method can reduce the cost of manufacture as well as assure the OEM specifications are imbedded into all future pieces. This type of reverse engineering and manufacturing is a well understood and is directly applicable to this type of task.



This could be a way to assure a stock of frame pieces remanufactured to OEM specs... just takes time and money.



Trivia... Hudson Uni-body manufacturing was learned when Hudson became a supplier to the WWII aircraft industry. Stamped steel or aluminum was used to frame the aircraft. A strong light weight means of creating a fuselage or car body.



Cheers