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Narrowing front clip *no help for me huh?*

BigOrange90Jimmy

BigOrange90Jimmy

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I'm gonna do this next week, and was wondering something. I have the "stacked" style headlights. Exactly how much of the radiator support can I chop away and still use the factory headlight location? I'm at school right now, and my truck is at home, so I have no way to check it out.

Also, if I plan to boatside it, what thickness metal would you suggest, and should it be bolted to the body or welded, or even be a part of the body?
 
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that'll work.

Now, I know if I taper it, I have to ditch the inners. Or can I trim them so I can still have some form of engine protection? This is my DD, and mountain road salt covering my engine doesn't sound good.
 
IMO dont do it if you want to DD it and have inner fenders. I also think you can only go in a couple 1-2 inches on each side before you have to kill your headlights. You could move the headlights in also....
 
Yeah, I was gonna cut the portion between the radiator opening and the headlights out, then weld it back together. Will it hurt it to not have inner fenders? I'm still running the factory air cleaner.
 
BigOrange90Jimmy said:
Yeah, I was gonna cut the portion between the radiator opening and the headlights out, then weld it back together. Will it hurt it to not have inner fenders? I'm still running the factory air cleaner.
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That is what I did. It worked pretty good. The inner fenderwells got ditched years ago so I don't know about that. It does have some problems with water when it rains heavy. I took off around 8" on each corner for mine.
 
You will most likely need to ditch the inner fender unless you get real creative. The key is in how you taper in the fender and how far you go. Some people will cut the outside fenders and start the taper after the top support bolt. Others (like me) just angled in the entire thing. When you do this, you have to cut quite a bit of the cowl away and skin out the fender itself to make the room.

For example, I went in 9.5" on each corner. My heater motor was just barely touching the inside of the outside of my skinned fender.

Another thing to think about is the core support will want to pull in to take up the distance lost when narrowing. Mine pulled in enough that I had to switch to electric fans to make it work. Also support for the radiator core needs to be looked at. Origianally, I used two pieces of long 1/2 inch all thread to get the placement. It still wobbled around some but not too bad.

I also cut out the headlight buckets and moved them in and it worked out OK.

Mine worked out nice untill I ripped it all out and replaced it with tube and fiberglass. :D
 
Sandman said:
Another thing to think about is the core support will want to pull in to take up the distance lost when narrowing. Mine pulled in enough that I had to switch to electric fans to make it work. Also support for the radiator core needs to be looked at.
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Yeah thats another good point. Mine went back a bit and killed my radaitor. Going to electric fans as we speak. err type.
 
Thanks for pointing these things out fellas!

So if I decide to taper after the cowl, I won't have to skin the fender?

Hmm....this sounds like it's starting to become more of a hassle that it's worth right now. I may just wait for the summer to do it.
 
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