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.
Next you need to notch out the frame, Not everyone does this and will fabricate a new bottom, pick your poison.
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.
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.
After that we welded what was exposed and ground it down for the following two bits.
From there Mike fabricated the pieces to box back in the top of the frame.
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.
And the absence of a crack I was after.
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.