Project "Black Smoke"

[snowbound98]

Stan1688- thanks. I'll do that for sure. That's a good thing for me to run the ford shock tower cuz I really wanted to fill them holes where the shock bolts go thru the frame. Where did you mount yours? More forward? Or did you mock it up then flex it to find best spot? I might do a hoop also so I can run dual shocks. Either way I'm filling them holes.

 

[stan1688]

I mounted them just behind the stock shock mount holes.

If it were me, I'd run hoops and try to mount the shocks as vertical as possible for more stability.

 

[snowbound98]

Had a couple set backs lately. Broke my finger, made it hard to work on rig. Blew head gasket on my DD. Had to take girlfriend in to get her wisdom teeth pulled, which cost me some of my parts money. But now i'm back at it and will be in garage grinding and welding all weekend. Ordered dual shock hoops from sky-manufacturing. Mocked up pan hard bar and it hits engine crossmember. Had to modify it a little and will be welding it to crossmember to compensate for steel I cut off. Will post some pics this weekend of the progress. Also my a-bomb bumper center should be here soon. Gotta mock everything up and make sure pan hard bar will be straight as possible b4 welding it in place. Check back this Sunday, I'll have pics up.

 

[snowbound98]

Little update. Not much progress. I removed frame repair plate from steering box area. The top front bolt hole was completely gone. Tore out of the frame before repair. I fixed all that. But now I'm not sure if I'm gonna cut the whole side section out of the frame there and weld in a piece of 1/4" plate to reinforce that area. I'm gonna have bolts that hold box to frame go thru some steel pipes so it can be welded to inside frame on boxing plates and outside frame and have a little protrusion. I'll figure all that out later.

Might be hard to see but that frame section is cracked all to hell. I can drill holes at the ends of the cracks to keep em from going any farther and grind em out and weld em up or just place that whole section. At the time I just wanted to repair it so I welded up some holes and started grinding out the cracks but then stopped.

 

[snowbound98]

Got some more parts in. Floor pans for the front, body mounts front and rear, kick panels, and lower cowl panel. Got in my shock hoops which prob won't work cuz of clearance issues with the steering shaft and pan hard bar frame mount.

 

[snowbound98]

Here's how I modified the pan hard bar frame mount to go on my engine crossmember.

Got my a-bomb bumper center in yesterday. Looks great! Thanks Kert. Quality work!

 

[snowbound98]

Sending frame out this coming week to the frame shop. I opened up the holes in the frame for Kert's front shackle hangers and got to looking at it and it appears the frame is twisted a bit. That explains why the passenger side shackle bolt was broke when I got it. Gonna have it heated and tweaked back to shape before I finish boxing it all in. Then I may even have it heat treated when all fab work is finished. That'll help it from cracking in the future I hope. I know once that is done then ur not suppose to weld to or drill on it. So I just need to make sure I'm finished with everything before that's done. So I'll get started on body work and patch panel replacement while frame is getting reshaped.