Today I made the first step to converting this thing to a 4wd. When I installed 52's in the front of the General, I fabbed my own body mount brackets with hangers. This time around I decided to get the B52 brackets from DIY4x.
Kurt warned me the holes wouldn't line up much on a 2wd truck. I was hoping it would be a little closer than it ended up being. I think I still saved a little time over fabricating my own brackets. Regardless, the brackets themselves are very nice.
First thing we did was pull the front bumper and the grill. This is what the factory brackets for the core support body mounts look like:
For reference this is what factory 4wd brackets look like with the spring hanger.
I unbolted the body mounts and used a couple of 2x4's to hold the core support up a little. I'm fortunate enough to a oxy-acetylene torch to use for cutting off rivet heads. The only thing you have to careful of is to not burn through the frame. If you cut the heads off on the bracket side the brackets will make it easier to keep the torch from damaging the frame. I'm still always careful not to go too deep. Here's how it looks with the brackets removed.
Unfortunately in my case really only 1 hole out of the 6 I needed lined up. In the picture below you can see the bolt in the 1 hole and if you look closely you can see the 2 holes on the bottom that are just a little off.
The brackets are set up for 2 options for location. The bolts are supposed to go in every other hole. As I mentioned there are 2 other holes that are close but the one furthest right is 2 holes away instead of just 1. You will notice in the picture above with no bracket there are already quite a few holes/slots and I didn't want to add anymore.
I ended up cutting the third nut off the backing strap so that I could drill out and use the 2 holes that were close. The top 3 holes had to be drilled out from scratch.
You can see in that picture above, the 2 existing top holes line up correctly except that they are too low. I had to drill 5 new holes in both sides. Also the top holes were close enough to the frame that I had to trim down the backing strap.
Before:
After:
The other side worked out the same way.
And here they are all installed.
Hopefully next weekend I can get the rear hanger installed in the frame. Should be a little easier than the front. My son has basketball games on Saturdays for the next month so I'm only working on Sundays. Planning to do things in single steps so I can get the axle installed in one weekend.
Here are a few good pics from 54inches that show the difference in mounting holes.
