New problem.

The last thing I did in the shop was to remove this fuel tank and the arched cross member above it. If I am going to use this large tank in the crew cab, which I an, I will need to transfer over this raised cross member. I beat the top rivets with a cold chisel and medium hammer. I got out the hot wrench for the lower, hard to get to, rivets.

By the way, the donor frame had taken a hard hit on the end of the passenger side rail causing it to diamond or parallelogram, so I cut loose the right sde first, then put a come-a-long on it to pull it back square. I just used a framing square along the left rail to check squareness.

So, I brought the newly free cross member into the shop and laid it next to the arched one shown in this pic. The holes for the top rivets are perfect, but the bottom holes for the gusset are wrong. This is when I found that the crew cab frame is a full inch deeper than the '92 standard cab donor. I remember this being an issue when I took the 360 out and put the 440 in. I had left the under tranny cross member on, and, since it bolts to the bottom of the frame, it put the tranny too low by an inch. Anyway, this is an imprtant cross member because it is right even with the front spring hangers. I want to get it right. I think I have come up with a way to secure this in with an inch of spacer without compromizing integrity. All this just so I can spend more at the fillin' station.

This thicker frame also pretty much means I do not change over the tranny member that I talked about in my last post for the same reason I was not able to do it ten years ago.