Hi,

I just bought myself a S1 turbo front crossmember etc, and it is very good condition apart from the fact that the passenger side tie-bar is slightly bent where it mounts onto the TCA. It's probably about half an inch out.

How could I straighten it? I assume you could do it by heating it up and then bending it, although presumably this a job for an engineering company as I'd never get it hot enough at home...

Does anyone have any ideas as to how I could sort this out?

Cheers
Mark

 

oh surprise surprise

I've bought 2 S1 rollbars and they were all bent aswell, they are like toffee!

MEF sell some very nice rose jointed replacements, £150 a pair though, but you know they are good quality

 

Thanks for that - it's good to know they can be replaced.

I have got this one pretty straight now by using a blow lamp, vice and a lot of oomph, but I'll probably replace it at some point

 

that'll be nice and brittle now then

 

So are you saying that it's unsafe to use heat to straighten a bar like this then? I though that was pretty much standard engineering practice. What would you I have done? Left it bent?

I only used a plumbing blow lamp - it's not as if I got it red hot or anything... Does this still sound dodgy?

 

i was mainly taking the piss, but you can make metal brittle if you heat it up and cool it down too quickly.........wouldn't of thought it'd be much of an issue though.

 

Bastard - I though you might be at least I didn't run it under the tap to cool it down lol

After snapping that rear tie bar once before I'm paranoid about beaking another one. I'll definately be replacing both front and rear tie bars with MEF ones when I've got some spare cash