[Dashman]

I guess I was gluten for more punishment for my transgressions against this truck as a teenager (hahaha) that I sought to pull the left frame rail. The previous photo with the 1/4" steel piece doesn't show it, but the difference was 5/16". The truck is on jack stands in the front, and I didn't want to wait to drive it to a frame shop. Sorry, I don't have during and after photos, but I'll briefly describe my process. I loosened all the cross member bolts. I set up a gooseneck flat bed with the kingpin against the right front rail, and then used a chain screw tensioning binder to pull the left frame rail. During the process I could see that the bolts were holding back the displacement, so I removed the bolts on the left side. I got the left rail to square in the back, but it looked like it was more forward than the right in the front. I think it was the truck's weight on the front springs that caused the left rail to shift backwards again. It stayed with 1/8" difference in the frame rails at the rear. However, the front rails really matched up well.

The next morning I noticed that now it was the cab that was out of square as though the cab was forward on the right rail. I measured a 1" gap between the cab and bed on the left, but it was 1-1/4" on the right. I set up a vise grip, ratchet strap, and floor jack to pull the cab backwards. I used a 4x6 to spread the load on the floor support Z channel, and clamped the vise grips on the same channel. During the process I could step on the strap and it would move the cab. The front just got pulled along for the ride. No fenders were harmed during this process, hahaha. I settled on a cab to bed clearance of 15/16" on both sides as shown in the attached photo even though it's deceiving.

After that I went to work on reinstalling the bolts into the rear cross member. It's tweaked, so I used a pipe clamp to pull and push it to get the holes lined up. If there's a procedure, it should be the upper bolts first, just sayin'. I'll get the engine cross member bolts soon.