You guys have given me some good ideas.
The "ballast" in the cargo bay is an especially easy one. Good thinking.
Putting the lift pads onto the rear of the front springs will also work in MOST cases. The exception is when I need to take those springs OFF, as I WILL be doing to replace them with mono composite springs. Once I do the mono composite thing, I'll need to desist from using the springs as lift points, because while STEEL leaf springs can handle that kind of unanticipated loading point, I am not sure about COMPOSITE springs doing so. I don't want to take a chance.
I am also going to try to put the lift pads in their vertical position and thread past the exhaust to the frame rails, but it might be hard to do so - the exhaust is pretty close to the frame rails on each side.
The exhaust routing problem will disappear once I chnage the engine over to the V8 I am planning to do. I will ENSURE I run the dual V8 exhaust pipes AWAY from the frame rails, more towards the centerline of the chassis.
In the meantime, the ballast idea sounds liek a great safety idea to give me peace of mind. It is especially workable since I store 4 or 5 donkey feed bags 6 feet from the rear of the lift area, and those bags are 50 pounds each. Because the leverage of thsoe bags by the tailgate area of the bed would be so great compared to the leverage of the front mounted engine weight - at least 8 feet of leverage for the bags to the c of g, versus 2 feet for the engine, I'lla ctually have to make sure I don't put too MANY bags back there!
jdl: Thanks for the suggestion on temporarily removing the exhaust segements, but the exhaust system is WELDED together.
Jim G
Last edited by JimGnitecki; 02/07/2008 2:25 PM.
