Rocky Mountain Billy Goat Build

Why do you have to cut and flip the mounts on the savvy cross member?
You could choose to weld them the other way, but why not make the access as simple as can be? I can now raise and lower all that without having to unbolt the crossmember from the transmission bracket.

I also think a gusset probably should be there, so if you kept them as they were there wouldn’t be room to add that. Whenever I get back in I’ll add those as insurance.
 
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I finally passed the form I liked for the function I want. I’m trying to think of a way to have it all…

One thing is I think I’ll be getting the savvy tail lights and selling the trail tails, the round lights just look off to me.

Also the rear tire - I don’t know that I can keep it on, but probably will drill out the holes to keep the carrier there most of the time (barring tough trails). I’ll have to fill in the cross threaded

Finally the armor, I think it needs to be body matched.

I have the savvy rub rails sitting in the garage, but I either need to customize the rail or the tub to adapt them for the GenRight bolt pattern. If I were to do it again, I wouldn’t have taken the GenRight slider deal I got locally.

Edit: I’ll probably just swap the tail lights to start.
 
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Big fan of color matching, but I am really diggin' the red/aluminum combo you have got going on
Whenever the hilines ship I will probably make a decision based on that. Crawltek says they come powdercoated black, so that may be the deciding factor as there won't be much red left aside from my hood and a few seams since eventually there will be flak armor between the front fender and door.
 
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Whenever the hilines ship I will probably make a decision based on that. Crawltek says they come powdercoated black, so that may be the deciding factor as there won't be much red left aside from my hood and a few seams since eventually there will be flak armor between the front fender and door.
Yeah, the most unresponsive company ever.
 
I need to buy some stainless to practice with before I take this on, but let’s look at the savvy rub rails vs the GenRight corners.

First how they mount, this is really slick. You replace the countersunk bolts with carriage bolts for everything except the front bolt.

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As expected. The bolt pattern doesn’t match up, so I’ll need to move these slots.

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Alternatively I could redo the corner holes for this, which seems a little appealing since there’s more. Maybe that doesn’t matter, I’ll think a bit on it but I believe it’s easier to move the slots and probably doesn’t matter too much other than a tight fit since they’re for rubbing.

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Some trimming will be necessary if you have exogate hinges.
 
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I need to buy some stainless to practice with before I take this on, but let’s look at the savvy rub rails vs the GenRight corners.

First how they mount, this is really slick. You replace the countersunk bolts with carriage bolts for everything except the front bolt.

View attachment 267129

As expected. The bolt pattern doesn’t match up, so I’ll need to move these slots.

View attachment 267132
Alternatively I could redo the corner holes for this, which seems a little appealing since there’s more. Maybe that doesn’t matter, I’ll think a bit on it but I believe it’s easier to move the slots and probably doesn’t matter too much other than a tight fit since they’re for rubbing.

View attachment 267133
Some trimming may be necessary if you have an exogate hinges.
Trimming is necessary with exogate hinges.
 
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x3 on that.

with the new rockers, even though the body mounts are raised i really notice the body puck bolt heads and the skid plate bolt heads.
 
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This needed more hands and the BFH Garage, finally deleted the butt crack. Huge thank you to @jjvw and @hosejockey61, this isn’t a small project.

The scariest part is cutting your frame, but it’s easy to get over. Don’t be an idiot like me and get one side slightly crooked, if you imagine that plane sliding up the gap you create a larger gap than just the cutoff wheel. It’s a skill I still need to work on.

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Next you need to notch out the frame, Not everyone does this and will fabricate a new bottom, pick your poison.
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You want this smiling fish to shut its mouth, tack it in place and chop off the little extra chin that sticks out after you close up the notched out area. You can see my fubar’ed cut on the inboard side of this frame rail.
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Bolt up the rear crossmember after you cleaned it all up to weld. It should be close but need some love to push it into place since those bolts are a hinge point.
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After that we welded what was exposed and ground it down for the following two bits.
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From there Mike fabricated the pieces to box back in the top of the frame.
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Again we ground those down a bit for the fish plate. I learned today why it’s called that and that it makes it so there’s no points for load to focus and cause premature failure.

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And the absence of a crack I was after.
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To the untrained eye the savvy skid now looks like it’s lowered. But it’s in the same location as before, just on the lower of the two heights only on the visible side.

I think when I outboard I may consider playing with ideas to address the crossmember over the frame arches to gain another inch with the gas tank. Since with an LJ you hit the rear more often, I wouldn’t mind getting something there.
 
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While everything was down I also added L brackets to make a pseudo sleeve for my hitch since it was getting a little bit of rotation in the crossmember fully loaded.

The paper is something that will eventually come out, but it’s got a half dozen bends in it or so to act as a little bit of tolerance to make pulling the bumper and replacing it in the future easier.

Just two of these caddy corner to each other should be enough.

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