Center tunnel / chassis reinforcements

Dan Sarandrea (Phila) said:
Chris Obert is parting out a car in FS&W and in his thread posted this pic of the section of the floor he salvaged from the car (a wreck). Shows a view of the structure that one does not normally see.

View attachment 47480
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I'll use that pic to give another illustration of the factory reinforced areas of the tunnel. Explanations of the arrows and lines are below the pic:

1621847942928.png


1) The upright braces (cut off here) that go from either side of the tunnel up to the dash area. This reinforces the forward portion of the tunnel. From this point forward there is lots of chassis support from the forward door posts, dash structure, front firewall/bulkhead, etc.

2) A second layer brace/plate is welded inside the tunnel under the shifter, roughly along where the red line is. The sides/edges of that plate are rolled to increase its rigidity. This overlaps the upright braces (#1) a bit in the front.

3) Another second layer brace/plate just like in #2 is under the park brake lever area, roughly where the red line is.

4) The rear bulkhead structure ties into the tunnel with overlapping layers of sheet metal panels. Lots of structural support there.

You can see there are two areas with no additional support (green lines); the long section between #2 and #3, and the short section between #3 and #4. Both have open holes in the top panel which further weaken things. The long front section seems to be where most (all?) of the damage ends up happening, as seen here by the purple arrow. This is located in the chassis where the two passenger door openings are along the sides of the car. So this is the area that will benefit most from additional reinforcement. I imagine the reason the shorter section toward the rear doesn't seem to be affected as much is because it is located at the rear of the passenger door openings, and therefore gets support from them at the sides of the chassis. Although I haven't seen any evidence that this rear area is weak, it would probibly benefit from reinforcement in terms of chassis rigidity - particularly for a track car or such.
 
Part of my brain wants to rip out that whole tunnel and make a cool open framework, possibly right angle sections or small box beams at the two upper longitudinal corners. With a stripped interior that would all be visible. I don't see any competition Xs with the tunnel modified but I assume this is because a good roll cage makes tunnel reinforcement a non-issue.
 
carl said:
Part of my brain wants to rip out that whole tunnel and make a cool open framework, possibly right angle sections or small box beams at the two upper longitudinal corners. With a stripped interior that would all be visible. I don't see any competition Xs with the tunnel modified but I assume this is because a good roll cage makes tunnel reinforcement a non-issue.
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Do you mean something like this:
_X_kAnZw - Copy.jpeg


Or how about the highly modified chassis being built by the dad of one of our young members. I don't recall his username and don't have any links to his threads, but that one has a tube chassis with a CF floor. Everything on the build is exotic.
 
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