Quote:
Originally Posted by JJorgensen52
Cutting down the K3500 frame should not be terrible, and can be plenty strong (in fact stronger than factory) if done with correct fish plates and a good welder.
That said, when you start getting into multiple cuts and splices, you increase the probability of something going amiss. With the C30 frame, a lot of the hangars and so forth line up with factory holes, which allows you to keep things aligned pretty well.
Either way, what's best is what you're comfortable with. On my last project (as you know) I did the original frame with modified hangars and such. On my current one, I'm building a hybrid frame from a different generation truck and a metric G-body. So I'm not really biased  |
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dieselwrencher
I agree with what Jjorgensen52 said. On my 76 I did a step cut to help make it stronger. I used to work in a heavy truck frame shop and we used to straight cut them up to a certain length. All the ones we did got sleeved with minimum of 1/4" cold rolled. On super long rigs, we angle cut them. None of them ever got fish plates either. They never had any come back and they had been doing truck stretching/shortening and frame altering since 1979. We had a dump truck come in that they built in the mid 90's that had been rolled. The frame was straight where they stretched it and didn't start to be roled and twisted until after the sleeve ended. We saw all kinds of mangled trucks, and fixed 98% of them.
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I agree 100% so after a lot of consideration and a pretty big frame fab quote (6 splices w/fish plate and the right rail repair, 2 of the splices were to add 72 frame horns) from one of the better welders in my area I have decided to finish scrapping the K3500 frame.
We are going to try and acquire another C30 133" frame (new plan A?) and if that doesn't fly then we'll go with standby plan B (use my blue C30) for the frame. This new direction does simplify some things and complicate others but its all good cuz there is a plan right???