autospring vs HBS
02-24-2010, 02:15 AM
#21
The design is structurally more sound. Before I bought mine,I had the specs and images reviewed by our engineers, machinists,and weld engineers. The welds on the autosprings are inferior to the HBS.
Its the gussets that make them weaker. Because they arent necessary. What they did is a very common,bad practice. Over-engineering. When you add unnecessary welds,you also add unnecessary HAZs,or heat affected zones. With the gussets they used,they could have made the spacer from 10ga steel,and still be good.
But,since they don't typically see extreme useage,they should both be fine.
Its the gussets that make them weaker. Because they arent necessary. What they did is a very common,bad practice. Over-engineering. When you add unnecessary welds,you also add unnecessary HAZs,or heat affected zones. With the gussets they used,they could have made the spacer from 10ga steel,and still be good.
But,since they don't typically see extreme useage,they should both be fine.
I do agree they may be over engineerd. However your focus on heat effected zones, while a pluasible concern, really seems to be of no concern at all. Yes the metal is fatigued more where heat is present, but the structural quality of the steel used is great enough that the introduction of heat isn't going to cause any issues when the application is supporting the front end of a 5,000lb truck. With a tensil strength of 30,000 - 60,000 PSI (assuming some form of mild steel) you're not going to see an issue at all ... unless the truck is jumped a lot, but I'd take a stab and say you'd have other parts of the vehicle bending or breaking first.
That said, you're right, both should hold up compeletly fine. I have no prejudice towards one kit or the other as I haven't made up my mind yet. But I'd prefer a solid spacer cut from a billet blank, though I have yet to see a kit engineerd that way with an offset.
