clip work

3/18/2008

Ok, before we get carried away let me apologize for the crappy pics; i broke the digicam and didnt get anew one until much later on in the swap so some of the early pics aint so good. Anyways, moving on!

Ok, so i got the neighbor to help me get the front clip up on the truck. Well, as it turns out, the bumper that i built around the 3"body lift no longer clears the fender! Well, im not one to sacrifice ground clearance, so i just cut the bottom of the fender off, and whatta ya know, it bolted right on!

Movin on up! Now weve got this

I figured at this point i could put the doors on, and get everything re-aligned

Looks kinda like a truck again, altho nowhere near what it used to be:

So, so previously i had moved the front-most body mount to the top of the frame rails, for tire clearance. Well this time i didnt want to hack up a nice clean core support, so i made a mini-body mount instead

The concept:

...and the finished product:

Ok, so now that the front-clip is firmly set inplace, it was time to move on to the fenderwells. I figured that since i had to cut them up to clear the 42s with 11" of lift, than now that i was down to 8", id have to cut another 3 or so inches out. Well, i was pretty close. Take a look at this:

Not even close to fitting!

But, it helped me to figure out just where i needed to cut, so i made the first rough cut:

I also starting trimming the core support back a bit

Ok, so the next step was to make tabs, so i could weld the two halves of the fender back together

To say im 'trimming' the fenders is an understatement!

So with that done, i yanked the clip again, and get all the tabs bent over to begin the welding