COE plan/questions/advice

Being a structural engineer and having been in the welding business for a long time and being known for building trackhoe thumbs that a nearly indestructible I can tell you that any fancy cutting is a waste of time and only a comfort factor for the ones involved. Good even bevels and gaps between the parts are where it’s at. While z cuts and 45s would decrease the chances of a catastrophic failure it’s not going to keep it from breaking and makes it much harder to keep things straight. Without doing any math I would guess that 90% of the bending strength of the frame is in the top and bottom flange meaning that the most important area is the roughly 3 inches that everyone cuts straight. From doing destructive weld tests, good welding practice will easily produce results that are stronger than the pieces being welded. And over welding is highly likely to cause cracking right beside the weld. I always grind the outside of the frame flat and then smooth with a flap wheel because the outside most portion of the flanges see the highest stress. I also grind the inside of the flanges within about .045 of flat I typically don’t do anything with the inside of the web unless the weld is in the way of something. The idea being that will make up for a slight imperfection in the welding without making a significant stress riser. I have done lots of trucks this way and never had a problem. Several are dump trucks and have survived being rolled. One dump truck is mine and been severely abused doing off road work on farm jobs.

 

My first truck was a IH cabover with the red and blue balls on the door too .



I didn’t do bedbugging ,
I was with Triple Crown Service, and since NS railroad owned triple crown and NAVL they used NAVLs highway authority for a couple of years before getting their own .


Would love to have a set of NAVL mudflaps for my man cave garage.