Third time is the charm (hopefully)

Well, our modified lower control arm braces lasted all of about one month before they broke again--for the second time. This time, after a quick glance at the tattered, twisted metal, I decided that the only way to solve this problem was to install new braces.
I did a search on the Internet and, much to my surprise, it seems that these brackets are some of the few that are not reproduced--at least not in the corners where I looked. So, I decided we had to make our own.
Fortunately, I have some sheet metal at the shop that matched, or it may have even been larger gauge than the originals. Without a second thought, we jacked the car up and proceeded to cut away all of

Out with the old and in with...our new cardboard brackets

the old bracketry. With a clean palette to work with, I then flatted out what was left of the old brackets and traced out their shape on an empty Cheez-it box. In hindsight, I should have traced only one, then made a copy of the other, because for some reason when I cut them out and shaped them, they were quite different from each other. However, they seemed to fit fairly well, so I forged ahead.
I used a jigsaw and a metal blade to cut out my sheet metal, then notched and formed the edges for more rigidity. A few tack welds at each joint, a little grinding and sandblasting, and I was left with a pair of not-too-bad-looking brackets.

Traced and ready for cutting

One thing we had struggled with on this side of the car, when we originally installed our new suspension components, was trying to get the lower control arm to align with the mounting bracket. It required a good bit of pushing and twisting to get it to go in place, which is what alerted me to the fact that our frame/suspension was most likely badly out of alignment. The shock towers had also been heavily welded back together at some point, probably due to a serious accident. I accepted the fact that we would probably never get the wheels aligned perfectly, but rather get it all as close as possible and live with it.

Not looking too bad...

Since I had these two new brackets detached from the frame, I decided to use the lower control arm iteslf to assist in positioning them. I ran the bolt through the brackets and the arm, and set the whole assembly up against the frame, Then, I took a couple of self-tapping screws and zipped the brackets up tight to the frame. So far, so good!
It was time to weld. My sloppy technique was to be put to the
ultimate test this time, especially since I had to work from below. The first side went pretty good, with the welder crackling along with some fairly satisfactory welds. When I moved to the other side, however, I suddenly could not find that sweet spot with the welder where it sizzles with the sound of a good solid weld. I adjusted and re-adjusted my settings, and finally crawled out and even tried running some beads on a scrap piece of metal.

Ready for welding

No luck. I couldn't get a good bead to save my life. The only thing I can think is perhaps I have a bad tank of gas. I had to refill our tank for this job and was forced to go to another dealer, as our only other local welding supply house has been swallowed up by a larger competitor and closed down. I was using this tank on the first bracket, though, so I'm not sure my theory holds water.
Anyway, after many minutes of popping welds and globbed metal, I at last got to a point that I thought would be sufficient. With my trusty (and overworked) grinder, I cleaned up my mess as best I could and covered the whole shebang with paint and undercoating. That low grade carbon steel will need all the help it can get for protection from the elements.
Yesterday, Daniel and I got up early and went to the shop to bolt the

Done! Hopefully for good

suspension back together. Our goal was to attend a local car show and swap meet that has recently started up here. Unfortunately, we were never able to get the front wheels to align in even a slightly satisfactory fashion before it got too late in the day, so we'll have to put that show off until next month.
We did finally get the wheels to track reasonably well without squealing or pulling too hard, so tomorrow we plan to find a shop in town that knows how to work with these old cars in getting the front end aligned. Hopefully, they won't laugh us off the property when they see what we have to work with!