Tom - Excellent job getting the photos to load up.
Your support clearly suffered damage or a failure at some point in its life and looks to have a "homegrown" repair like happened with most trucks back in the day.
You can see the bottom center of the support has a crack running through it front to back near the center and looks like the stiffener plate that you can see between the raised support part riveted on the main "U" section in 2ManyTrucks picture (snagged and edited a touch below) appears to have once been attached to your support but looks to be entirely gone.
I'm with 2ManyTrucks on the suggestion to see if you can find a better replacement support. That or you have some extra work in trying to repair and get that one into shape. If you decide to hunt for a replacement and don't have any sources close to you, put an ad up in the
Truck Parts Wanted forum in the Swap Meet and let fellow Bolters try to help you locate one.
