hustler help

[alex]

i took the frame out of my hustler 950 and it has a few places that are bent would it hurt to heat it and striation it or should i just use a hammer

[alex]

what can i do about stress cracks in the frame

[hydromike]

When I took my 980 frame out of the body, I found about a dozen cracks that I needed to weld up. There's really no other fix. If you leave them, they'll likely propagate until the frame is in pieces. If you weld it yourself, or take it to someone to do the welding for you, be very thorough in cleaning the frame up to look for cracks. On my side rails, every single instance where a vertical piece of steel was welded to the frame, and at every single cross member, there was a stress crack in the frame. After I was about halfway through finding them in these places, I began to EXPECT to find them in all of the others. Sure enough; even if it was only about an eigth of an inch long, they were present at each location.

I added lots and lots of gussets between my side rails and the cross members, MIG-welded all of the existing cracks, and added about 5 pounds of steel to my T20 mount, which was just about falling off the frame. Racerone3 has done a lot of work on his frame, as well....

Here's an example of the carnage on my frame:


On Race's machine, one of the previous owners actually doubled up the thickness on the siderails:



His machine is also running the rare option of the Fukushima Daiichi Crossmember

[alex]

i do the welding but do you think i could add some angle iron on the inside of the frame the crack are in the middle of each tire

[racerone3]

Any steel you can add to the Hustler frame is probably going to be a good thing ( as long as you are a decent welder). It would probably be a good idea to reassemble the frame outside of the tub so that you can be sure that nothing you add is going to get in the way of axles, sprockets, chains or adjusters. (hence my Attex 8x8 frame ... ) I keep some lengths of junk chain around just for this process. connect them with zip ties instead of links ( this also helps if you have one that is way too short) so they can be put in and removed easily. a bit of weld spatter can easily be ground off an axle or sprocket, but will ruin good chain in a heartbeat

[alex]

alright thanks man i will try that