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This truck is going to be gorgeous.

Rear Wheel & Tire Fitment

Finally had a little time today to try and get the rear differential re-installed and measure up the backspacing needed for the wheel and tire combo fro the back. I had the differential partially installed a few weeks ago but I noticed that I had to cut out the inner wheelwell to clear the disc brakes. So I made a quick cardboard template and just hacked out the bare minimum to get the rear suspension to full travel. When I pull the body back off the frame I'll have to beadroll a new piece to weld in but for now I'll just have to live with the ugly.

As it stands right now, I have measured that I need 18x8's with 4” backspacing on the front and I have tires for 18x9's on the back. After I centered the rear diff with the panhard bar the right rear fender seems to be a little tighter fit than the right hand side by 3/8” or so. I believe that I have a little slop in the bolt holes that hold on the rear fender that will allow me to pull it out a little bit. If not then I will have to stretch it out a little with a little more persuasion. It is only tight in about the 10 o'clock position of the wheel/tire on the right side so I don't think it will be a difficult thing to adjust.

Since it was slightly tighter, I used the right fender to set the backspacing. I started out with a 4” backspacing and then had to move to a 4-1/2” backspacing to get it to fit within the fenderwell. I then crawled under to check the clearance to the inner fenderwell. It looked to have a little over an inch of clearance. It is pretty tight in there but I think it is going to fit ok. I went ahead and checked the same fit with 4-1/2” backspacing on the left side and articulated suspension at all three positions....full down, full up and ride height. It looks good as well. Now to place the order for the wheels and wait for the FedEx guy.

Rear Wheel & Tire Fitment Pics

Front Bumper & Brackets

Temps here were near zero earlier in the week (Xmas) but now they are in the 50s and 60s so time to get a few things done. I'm also battling a cold but I hate to let my week off go without hitting a lick on the project so I thought I'd sort out the front bumper and brackets in the time remaining.

First I had to put in the old front grille and dig out the old bumper brackets. I also had a repro filler panel and chrome bumper that came with the truck that I could possibly use. After mounting the grille and digging out the old brackets and mounting them on the frame it was pretty evident that one of the brackets (LH) was mangled quite a bit. A closer look at it and it looked like the damage was confined to the inner/center bracket...the outer bracket looked ok. Since I was going to have to modify the brackets anyway I decided to see if I could salvage these brackets instead of fabbing new ones from scratch.

I removed 4” out of the back bumper so I figured that I was going to want to shorten the front bumper as well. I set the bumper on top of the brackets and determined that I needed to remove 3” from the front bumper to tuck it in to the fender. It also looked like I should also move the bumper back about an inch as well. So I cut a 3” section out of the center of the bumper and welded it back together to start the build.

After the bumper was the shortened I went ahead and split both of the stock two-piece bumper brackets by removing the rivet so I could at least use the outer portion. I then mounted the outer portion of the brackets to the frame to see how things aligned with the shortened bumper. Of course they did not align but it did allow me to verify that I did need to pull the bumper in an inch.

I removed the brackets and then shortened them 1” in the fore/aft direction to pull the bumper back closer to the grille. I then remounted the shortened outer brackets and bolted up one side of the bumper to see how far the other side was misaligned so I could shorten the brackets in the L/R direction. With the bumper shortened 3” and removing the inner bracket from the stock set my measurements showed that I needed to remove 2-1/4” total, so I needed to remove 1-1/8” on each bracket. I then cut both sides and shortened them to align to the existing carriage bolt holes and temp mounted the bumper to the shortened brackets using the carriage bolts.

Like I said, one of the inner brackets was significantly bent and I could not use it but luckily I could use the slotted end portion that mounted to the bumper so I cut off about 2” of that area on both brackets and fastened it to the existing holes in the bumper so I could measure and fit a new piece of 1/4x1-1/2” bar that I had bought. After it was cut to fit I tacked the new metal piece in place, I then removed the brackets and did the final weld and grinding on these brackets and reinstalled it all back onto the truck to make sure it all still fit properly.

With the brackets completed and bumper fitted the next task was to cut the heads off the carriage bolts and weld them flush into the bumper opening to smooth out the look. The next task will be to fab a new front bumper filler to match the new bumper geometry.

Front Bumper & Brackets Pics

Front Bumper & Brackets Pics Con't

Great write-up and pictures to help show what you are doing.

Just a note that the number of pictures you can add with each post is now up to 10.

Might make your posting a bit quicker/easier (more time for the project ya know).

Fwd Filler Panel

With the front bumper mounted, the next job in the queue was fabricating a filler panel between the bumper and the grille. I took some cardboard I had (you can never have too much cardboard laying around) and made a template for the panel to see how it should look.

The shortened and shifted front bumper will require a different mounting scheme than the stock filler panel so I decided to try to pick-up the fasteners on the bottom of the grille that attach the lower radiator support. I would like to sneak the back edge of the filler between the grille and radiator support but I'm not sure that won't create a problem so I'll just leave that area until later. If it does create an issue then I can always tuck it under the radiator support. The only mod that I'd have to do would be to trim the small flange bent down on the radiator support to allow the part to sit properly under the support...but for now I'll leave the part long in that area and figure it out when I get the front sheetmetal dialed in better.

I plan on supporting the front edge of the new panel by mounting 4 small angle brackets into the bumper brackets. I will slot or oversize the holes in the small brackets that mount to the bumper bracket so I can adjust them up/down to level out the panel on final assembly.

After the cardboard mock-up was done, I transferred the edge trim to a piece of lumber I had laying around (you can never have too much lumber either) to make a buck. The board was a little too narrow but I was able to make it work. Once the perimeter was cut out on the board I then took my router and created a rolled edge with a radius bit for the hammer forming. I then took the cardboard template and scribed the perimeter +3/8 of an inch onto the metal I had for the panel.
With the buck and blank panel cut-out I then clamped it all together and slowly walked the edge down slowly by a body hammer. Once I had the large gradual curved edge hammered down then I had to make a small buck for the tight radii at the two ends and the concave curve since my board was too narrow. I ended up needing to make a few relief cuts in the flange in this area to get it to lay down properly and then I just ran a few beads on the mig to close them back up.

Once the part was completed I then dropped the bumper and slid the filler panel in place and just used some small c-clamps to hold it into place for now. I haven't installed the new lower radiator panel that I just got and I don't have a ton of confidence in the old front grille so I'm going to wait on re-trimming the edge & drilling the holes on the aft edge unto I get the front assembly closer but you can see how it turned out.

The next thing on the agenda will be fabbing the small brackets and attaching them to the bumper brackets. Hopefully I can get to this in the next few days to wrap up this small project.

That's some nice work.

Very slick.