Now, once you're satisfied with the cuts, it's time to start stitching it all back together. The frame is going to be plated with 3/16ths steel plate on both sides of the frame rails, but the frame needed to be joined first. The cut gaps were measured, and small intersection plates were welded in place.
After that, the boxing plates were cut and welded in place. Here is the passenger side outside plate. There is another place just like this welded to the inside of the frame rail as well. So, if you're keeping score, there's THREE pieces of 3/16's plate (two plates and the original frame) at every area where the frame was cut.
Here's a shot of the boxing plate on the passenger side front frame rail. Again, there's another plate on the side of this area as well.
Now that the frame was in place, it was time to address the engine. From the beginning, the plan was to leave the engine in it's original location and only bring the crossmember up. The reason for this is that you don't have to mess with the trans crossmember, and plus, I had already built all my shims to get my pinion angle where I wanted it. So, this meant that the motor mounts had to be relocated down 2" on the crossmember. This was one of the more challenging parts of the job. This meant that the engine mount stands had to be shortened. If you remember, I did an earlier mod to where I could use the engine mount stands from my '79 Suburban donor, which has the superior clamshell-style mounts. In this picture, you can see the surgery that had to be done. To help get the engine lower, the original bolt hole in the clamshell for the long attach bolt was moved up about an inch. The clamshells were also trimmed up, and this picture was taken before that was done. Also, because of the fact that the wheelbase was moved forward 1" to center the wheels in the fender openings, the motor mounts had to be moved 1" to the rear to keep the engine in it's original location. Disregard the groovy green clamshells, I got them from a guy who painted his entire engine engine that color. Yeah, it was ugly......
Here's a picture of the steering box bolted to check for fit and also to get the steering linkage positioned exactly where I wanted it.
Speaking of steering linkage, I came to the conclusion that the '79 Suburban frame was taller than the '64's frame. I discovered this when I went to attach the drag link to the frame. I got the steering linkage leveled, and perfectly in-line with the tie rods, and the drag link was way too low. I remedied this by drilling another hole in the link and attaching it to the frame.
Another area that needed a little bit of attention was the swaybar. The sway bar attach brackets that I got from Early Classic would not work because the rear attach hole was now hanging in the air because the area that it originally attached to was now 2" higher. Because the crossmember was moved forward 1", that was a very good thing, because the bar was now also 1" farther forward. I redrilled the front rails for the swaybar bushing fittings, and it'll now bolt directly to the frame. You can see it in this picture. You can also see that a new steering u-joint was installed to attach my column to the box.
The chassis is now at the point of getting blown back apart and cleaned and painted chassis black. The inner fenders will also need to be trimmed, and I'll post up pictures when I get to that point.
*****I have to give a HUGE thanks to Kustombrad and Bob for all of their hard work on this. I was away at work for 80% of the job, and those two maniacs deserve the credit for the work that was done. They did a great job. And oh yeah, it only took Brad 20 years to find out if his idea of Z'ing a chassis would turn out right!*****