[whateverpratt]

Day 3 would answer my other burning question. How many of the newer cross member holes will actually line up with the old frame holes. Answer: most.

There's a stout piece of stamped steel (the grey piece on the ground in the bottom picture) that fits on the inside of the frame rail on the squarebody trucks. It has one hole on the top for a bolt to go through the frame and the motor mount bracket, four on the side for those horizontal bolts, and two on the bottom for the vertical crossmember bolts (it doesn't cover all three because of its size). The top hole didn't match up with the '63 motor mount bracket and frame hole. Once the crossmember was installed, we just used the '63 holes as a guide and drilled through that piece since it was held inplace by the other bolts. That's one hole per side.

The other hole that didn't line up was the front (closer towards the bumper of the two) top horizontal hole on each side (hole without bolt in pic). Again, after bolting everything up, we used the front suspension crossmember as our guide for drilling through the truck frame. Once through the truck frame, the inside plate showed a hole in just the right spot (as it should have).

The happy news: the '85 cross member had correctly placed holes for the original '63 motor mount brackets, all the bottom of the frame to the top of the cross member vertical bolt holes lines up perfectly, and 3 of the four horizontal bolts lined up (full disclosure: there was a little bit of round file use on the horizontal bottom holes for ease of installation).

We finished up day three with the crossmember partially mounted up.