Front lower wishbone plate bending

[rincewind23]

Hi all,

Now my chassis is finished I'm starting on the wishbones. I am stuck at the point where I have cut the plates for the front lower wishbones, following the dimensions in the book. I am having trouble putting the 10 degree bend in at the bend line. I have tried clamping and bending it (obviously not going to work with 5mm plate!), heating and bending (still no luck). Thought about banging it with a *really* big hammer, but managed to convince myself that was unlikely to end well before I tried it (plus hitting exacly 10 degrees would be next to impossible..)

I just wondered how others have approached this problem - I thought about putting a groove in at the bend line with a grinder, bending, then putting a weld bead along the groove for strength. I'm not sure if the groove would weaken the bend and the weld bead wouldn't help - I'm hoping someone better at engineering than me might be able to help out.

I've got a 6-ton bottle jack if there's any way I could build a jig to bend the plate and use the bottle jack.

Cheers,
KEv.