On Thursday, September 19, 2013 8:46:12 AM UTC-4, Ed Huntress wrote:





If the bar can be 0.35" diameter, you're looking at less than 0.1 ^2

in. of area. Yikes. You need 100 ksi compressive yield strength in the

bar to handle the full five tons.




Ed Huntress

I am a frugal person so my suggestion would be to go to your auto salvage yard and if you can find it, get a torsion bar from a Nissan Truck. Second choice would be an axle shaft. Both will require reducing the diameter using a carbide bit. But if you do use steel from a auto wrecking yard, try to get steel that as close as possible to the diameter you want. Not only for less machinging , but I am not sure how deep the heat treatment goes on axles and torsion bars.

Dan