Kaiser frame rail

[R-Sargent]

Hi all, i am parting out a 54k early special . It has had the bottom of the frame reinforced,a 3/8" thick piece of steel the same width as the frame rail was welded on . It starts at the front coil spring pocket and go's all the way along the bottom of the rail to the leaf spring bracket. These frames were very light weight for the day and were prone to easily being crushed and i have had two of them break completely off just ahead of the front body mount behind the steering box and sometimes on the right side too just from metal fatigue. My question is has anyone ever seen this kind of reinforcement before ?   Could it have been done at the factory ?

[HJ-ETEX]

Several car companies explored making frames lighter and from lesser types of steel begining prior to WWII. Studebaker had a 'hat' type frame (cross section looked like a tophat), Nash used UniBody, and Kaiser used thinner guage metal with an X-member on the 51-55 cars. Well the idea was to reduce the use of specialized steel and as well as save material.
Mike Barker showed a 53 Traveler Kaiser at the Oshkosh National that had a boxed frame. That is, the side channels had panels welded on the inside.
Refering to your example, 3/8" seems rather thick and heavy to reinforce the bottom of the frame although it is easy to deform the bottom of the frame rails by jacking at the wrong point or running over debris in the road and you can do some repairs with just a 7" ViseGrips!!!

[Logan]

I need to do that apparently, because I have bent the rails in in a few places setting the car on jack stands--the metal really is thin there.