Project "Big Country" - Front Bumper Fab

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We got a good day's work in yesteray.

I liked the PO's idea of using square tubing (1" receiver tube) to mount the winch and make it removable until I figured out that my radiator would not fit between the frame rails without cutting most of the tubing out. Now I know why he had 3" of body lift :banghead:

Check out the fat welds he had holding the tube on :rubeyes: (and the bottom was just as bad) - I'd hate to see what size rod he used and give him props for not burning the frame in half in the process. About 10 cut-off wheels, a saw-zall blade and a lot of hammering both sides were off.

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We also bent a small hoop to clear the PS box. This would not have been an issue if I had stretched my fenders and kept the grill in the stock position. Since I chopped the grill, it actually sits 1-2" further back than stock.

We also took 2" out of the bars that we have holding the rear up. It sits much more level now and it could stand to lose another 1" out of the rear.

I still think it's up way too high and think it's because of the coils. The 5.5" coils are the first set that BC ever sold - Keith took them off of his rig since they were way too stiff and we thought with the extra weight on mine they may work out. There is still a lot of space between all of the coils - they haven't settled like most and the top 2 or 3 coils touch. Plus they're probably mounted a little higher than stock due to the CAGE brackets I used compared to the stock coil bucket. Any ideas or suggestions? I wish I had another set of 5.5" coils to try and compare.

[chuzie]

Well since you had to really bust your butt getting that crap removed I would say his intentions of it never coming off were well met

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Well since you had to really bust your butt getting that crap removed I would say his intentions of it never coming off were well met

LOL.. that's what I said after I finally got them off. :hysterical:

[Mill Knob]

:beer::xyxthumbs:Looking good Robert.. You should be proud of your self..

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I got 2 things in this week upergrin:

My Mastercraft seats came in on Wednesday :drinkbud: and shifter came in on Thursday :beer:

Here's a pic of my new seats and a pic of me in my new seat with new shifter :rockon: I'm not dirty or anything from working on the truck all day VROOM VROOM!!! :rebel:

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Keith and I got A LOT done on the front end and hood today!! :bdent:

First thing we did was weld some body mount tabs to the tube core support. Here are a few pics of before and after welding.

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I wasn't really sure how the hood was going to work out, but at the end of the day I'm really happy with it! Keith must have thought about it a lot more than I did because he had a game plan that worked out perfectly.

Since the tube support was rigid now, we bolted the fenders and grill back to it. We ended up using different parts of the hood frame from 2 different hoods since the PO of my rig had chopped the frame while cutting the scoop hole. We also went ahead and cleaned up the hack job the PO had done of cutting the scoop hole. It looked like he had used a sawzall while drunk.

We got the frame together with sheet-metal screws and made marks where to cut in order to get the frame to fit.

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Next thing we did was cut the edges of the hood off since we're going to re-use them for structure. We used the edges and tacked them to the trimmed frame to tie it all together.

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We put the frame inside the hood and made our marks to cut the hood :rubeyes:. Of course the hood is about an inch long now so we ended up slicing the hood in the front where it is narrow and out of the hood bubble line.

I guess next weekend we'll get to welding it all back together :xyxthumbs: