g741.org

Its been awhile since I posted work on my M37.

How much force do you think is needed to bend the casting of the rear lift bracket?

Getting ready to pick the transfer case.

Stripping the body down.

I don't think the castings will bend, even with heat?

sturmtyger380 wrote:Its been awhile since I posted work on my M37.

How much force do you think is needed to bend the casting of the rear lift bracket?

I would have expected the stamped frame to yield before the casting.

I decided to start working on taking out the rear sill. Like all you guys out there the bolts on the rear of the sill turned and then the weld nuts broke loose. So out with the grinder.



The bed is really not in that bad a shape but this one spot is really bad like Swiss cheese. They must have had something here that corroded the metal.



Grinder and punch is the way to go!

Okay, I cheated.





Other than the weld nuts breaking loose the angle metal does not look so bad.



This whole area of the sill is rusted but only in this one spot. Strange. Here is the bottom:



Alan

What do the bed bolts look like?

Do you mean the big stair bolts on the sill? The big bolt in the area of the rust was really eroded and had to be cut off. The one on the passenger side was not too bad and I was able to remove the nut and pull the bolt out no problem. The rest of the bed to frame bolts came out fine. The phillips head bolts I could not get to turn and just ground them off and punched them out.

The rear sill bolts that survived look like the threads got abused when I was turning them out.

John at Midwest has the replacements, I don't remember $$'s? Mine came apart a little easier, the captive nuts that spun were easy to reach with vice grips.

Here are the bed bolts. Not in a shape that I would want to reuse.



The passenger side metal angle, I got all but one bolt to come out. The one left I got out. This angle bracket had all the weld nuts intact.



The drivers side bracket where there is more rust, only one of the weld nuts was left. I have a new hex nut sitting in place and will weld that and others to fix it.



Here they are ready to prime. I did some welding on the original weld nuts to help reinforce them.

I think your right about the bed bolts, the welding on the brackets looks great.

Somehow I keep getting pulled off of the M37 to work on other projects. I still try to do a little each day.

I got the drivers side rear panel just below the tailgate straight but the edge of the piece was really chewed up. I could have used a bunch of bondo to create an edge but don't like doing that. So I cut out a section of an old truck and will weld it in place on the better truck.

Ready to weld in the patch panel:

those are cool clamps where'd ya get them from

52PLOWERWAGON wrote:those are cool clamps where'd ya get them from

http://www.eastwood.com/intergrip-panel ... -of-4.html