52Carl: I appreciate your comments, and granted, my modification is a compromise and not as preferable as the original design, but it has held up for the past 5 years and 5000 miles (I baby my truck). Plus, as you can imagine, removing the transmission is fairly easy (I switched out the 400 Turbo I originally installed in favor of a 4L60). If and when my arrangement fails, I guess I’ll consider further modifications. I just wanted to give Rocketman some ideas. What did you do? Regards, Dave
I was searching far and wide for the pics of what I did but could not find them. I am pretty sure that I posted them on this site.
Basically what I did was made my cuts in the same place that you did, but I cut them perpendicular to the ground. I welded plate steel drop plates to crosmember stub ends as well as to the ends of the cut out section of the crossmember.
I then drilled two holes in the drop plates for 1/2" bolts for easy installation and removal of center section.
This ended up giving me a 2" drop to clear the transmission. I can drop the oil pan on the transmission without removing the center section and it looks somewhat more like a stock setup and is very rigid.
As long as you continue to baby your truck and keep an eye on where your bolts go through your plate steel and the crossmember stub ends for failure, you should be alright.
Carl
