[TA_C10]

Front Cab Supports - Under Cab Repairs

These cab supports were worse than I originally thought. Driver side I only had to replace half the support but the passenger side had to come all the way out. These were very different than I had ever seen. Nobody documents this stuff... So here you go, your going to see the underside and inside of these front cab supports. Hope this helps someone out.

Here you can see all the spot welds I had to cut out. 4 on the under side of the support around the body mount hole, 4 on the back side(2 tabs on end of support), and several going down the rest(upper sides) of the support.

You can also see the spacer that the factory installs for the body mount bolt to use for support. Without that spacer it would collapse. You need to be careful when you cut the 4 spot welds out on the bottom end that you don't cut into that spacer.












A few of the tools that I used.







At first glance the reproduction supports looked pretty good. And really they weren't too bad. But I did have to make a few modifications to make it fit and up to my standards

The end of the original support had an angle cut out and so putting the two together I found that, marked it, ground it down to fit. I also made a slit in the corner of the right hand tab and peeled back the tab a little further as well to make it sit flush with the cab frame rail it gets welded to.

Then, lastly I noticed how the tabs on the reproduction didn't have material all the way to the top of the support and because of that it didn't cover the same area all the way where I cut the spot welds so I added some little strips to make the work. Otherwise my spot weld holes I cut were only halfway covered with metal and I wanted them completely filled when I go back to install them using those same holes.

I hope this all makes sense. Let me know if it doesn't and I can explain a little better perhaps.

















Peeled the tab back to sit flush with the new angle cut.










Here are my holes I cut for spot welds. Some of the floor pan was messed up from me using a hammer and punch wedge... LoL i'm tired and can't remember the name of that punch wedge tool.....

Anyways I got rid of the tore up floor pieces by simply cutting the spot weld holes through them so I will spot weld the floor supports in these areas from the top. The rest of the holes I cut in the support tabs and will fill those from the bottom. No big deal and makes fixing those small screw ups nice and easy









And here is how I added the new material to the tabs to complete them so I can reuse my spot weld holes I cut out from the original.














All done, now they fit pretty good. Currently I have the e-coat sanded off where needed and covered in zinc weld thru primer. Tomorrow I will be welding them in. Stay tuned.

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