well i left about an inch of the torque box on each side, and i drilled additional holes into the rear plate (under the gate) to plug weld in 10" x 4" x 1/4" plates. i notched out 1 corner about 2"L x 3/4"D, so it'd fit inside the remaining box and fit tight to it's rear wall. this allows the 8" x 4" to be used as a tub stabilizer up to the edge of my cut. and all those holes i drilled to bust the factory welds got filled into that piece of 1/4" backer.
i slit the leftover 1" top off the box and bent it upward against the body, then overlapped it with with an angled plate that is drilled through the tub and then plug welded to the inside upper edge in the box, to hold all that together.
while in the midst of all this crap it dawns on me i need to figure out some tailgate hinge (CJ), i don't want to use nutserts for this really. so i made up more nut plates that slide up in the box and spread the load area. the holes are pretty low so the gate come down about even with the threshold ridge.
i'll get better pics once i get the t, box capped and it's all tied together.
and i been packin up some stuff slow but sure and stashin it in the garage, under plastic. it's been raining and it's always wet, so i broke down and put a new roof on it this wkend. total tear off down to the rotten wood, sistered up a few joists that needed some help and dropped a new OSB decking over the old planking, followed by new tar paper and rolled roofing.
i had just got the deck down when the sky started fallin again, so i scrambled to get at least the tar paper over it, and got soaked to the bone, last run at the top of the roof and it just stops............MTHR-FKR.
i gotta figure out something on the towers, i didn't leave a lot of meat where i need to add holes to pass the big ass 5/8 bolt through. so i gotta get those holes in them and possibly add meat.