We had the 3/4 ton 4x4 frame shortened 18 inches. Thanks to my brother's father in law, who did the welding and fabricating.
If you look across to the other side of the frame (barely shown behind the tubing and wiring at top center) you can see 2" x 2" .125 square tubing. You can clearly see the heat penetration of the square tube in the foreground frame rail. This is to add structure. It should never fail. Also it creates a channel to route wiring and brake/fuel tubing through.
Everything is going to be routed on the inner frame rail to protect it from damage. The rust is going to be treated with locktite rust neutralizer (aka Naval Jelly). It works pretty well but you must have a clean dirt free surface to start with. I am going to take a heavy wire wheel and angle grinder and knock off the heavier scale and debris. Then I am going to pressure wash it the frame after soaking with degreaser.
Although this is not going to take place just yet. I inadvertently staked claim over my brother's garage and mechanical skills when he uses these for making ends meet. So the new plan is to get the truck "mocked up" and mechanically operating on its own. This way he can send it back to me to do the restoration type of things. Here are the tear down and mock up pics:
front clip removal.
We kept it in one piece, harness and all.
bed removal. Yep all you need is a cherry picker.
That's right! Dual tanks on a SWB!!
Here we removed the cab bolts and used the access pockets as tie down points.
Should have removed the steering column but all was good albeit a bit dangerous.
Decided to tie down to the outside to adjust weight bias. If I did it again, I would use an automotive lift. But in a pinch this worked out. We used a chain hoist on the other cab but feared the chain might swing and hit the glass on this cab.
There is the cab sitting on the ground. There were a couple of tense moments but we had 4 of us man handle it with a cherry picker.
We basically did the reverse to get the cab back on. It was much easier with the motor not in this frame but we had to lift the cab almost to the cherry pickers max position.
Here is the last shot of the day before the wife and I had to head back to the city. My brother has since added the tanks and front clip. Soon he will get the bed back on and finish the mock up.
I received this in the mail the other day from amazon:
302 VIN N 1996 (last year of the 5.0 without OBD2)