I did a bit of work this evening, removing the forward crossmember that supported the bottom of the bed near the front, and removing one of the two bump-stop mounts. This doesn’t sound like much, but it was actually pretty slow going.

I started by creating a wooden template out of a 2×4 to show basically where the crossmember should go, relative to the 4 forward bed-mounting bolt positions. The resulting U-shaped template complete, I placed it aside and got out my reciprocating saw and a metal cutting blade and got to work on the crossmember. Cutting through the top portion where it attached to the frame was pretty simple, but the bottom portion required me to get underneath the frame and cut upward. Anyone who’s done that knows it’s an unpleasant experience at best, with hot metal particles falling all around you. I didn’t have much room to maneuver the saw and it jammed a lot, and by the time I was almost finished with the one side, I was getting frustrated and losing patience. I was using the saw to get a clean cut, but I started to care less about the cut and more about just getting it done. It was time for something faster.

It was time to bring out the plasma cutter. The other end of the crossmember came off in about a minute, and I had to wonder why I bothered with the saw at all. My hands aren’t all that steady, but the cut wasn’t really all that bad. There are times when the plasma cutter is too imprecise or creates too much heat to be practical. But when it fits the task, there’s nothing quite like having that kind of cutting power in your hand.

I needed a different tactic for the bump-stops however. They need to be removed because they interfere with the new 4-link suspension, but I want to try to reuse them in a new position. I don’t know exactly how that’s going to work out yet, so I wanted to remove them while causing as little damage as possible. This meant grinding off the welds that attach them to the frame, and that meant no happy shortcuts with my favorite destructive toy. After an hour spent with the angle grinder (which I’m certain my neighbors must have enjoyed), I ground the weld down far enough to be able to convince the mount with a sledgehammer to give up and let go. I’m not looking forward to the quality time I’ll have to spend on the other mount; it was getting too late in the evening to tackle it tonight.

There are a few photos in the Frame Modifications section of the photo gallery.