Originally Posted by tweet66

If you use that heim, for added strength weld on another piece of steel above the heim to your lower shock mount. That way when you pass a bolt through the exiting clevis mount & then the heim, there will be a second piece of steel above the heim for the bolt to pass through. This adds strength to the mount and makes it less prone to bending. I have a great example pic of double sheer but I can't seem to attach anything from my hard drive....

Originally Posted by eZ

here is how the LCA looks now.


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Originally Posted by Norm Peterson

The local effects don't particularly depend on the inclination of the strut rod from the horizontal, although that may affect the magnitude of the axial load itself. You get bending equal to force "F" times the offset distance between their lines of action.

Let me try a sketch.

The black lines are as you assemble the joint and it is under no load.

The red lines are how it wants to be under a nominally axial load (the axial load really wants to be in a straight line with itself, or zero "offset").

What you end up with is something in between the black and the red outlines.

The devil is in the details, so the moments and the deformed shapes are only indicated (crudely). If you've got a thick piece bolted to a thin piece, the thin piece will bend far more than the thick piece will.

If the joint were to open up, the pin (bolt) can also come in for a bending stress term.

This is probably why the OE strut rods have two bolts each, in order to minimize the local effects of those single shear connections.


Norm