So before we do anymore work to the cab, I want to get it back on the chassis to make sure everything we have done so far works. I also want to make sure the cab is held in place on the chassis before we fit and weld the firewall in. There were a few things we wanted to do before we put the cab back on the chassis. One of the main things was to fix a missed assumption we made when building the chassis. We set the front drive shaft loop height thinking we were going to use a 3" drive shaft and making some assumptions for rear end travel. Well, it turns out after talking to Denny's drive shaft, we need a 3.5" shaft because of the length and power output. That combined with the wrong guess as to rear u-joint placement and you have an interference with the drive shaft and front drive shaft loop. Here is a close up of how it looked.
You can see it is an integral part of the X-bracing in the chassis. After some head scratching we came up with a plan to fix the issue. First it called for grabbing the plasma cutter and sawzall and getting the bulk of the original loop out. Then we wondered how to get the rest of the bars cleaned up. Here is what we came up with. The trusty tubing notcher!
It really worked better than we had hoped. Check it out.
Then we made some sleeves to fit in the stubs to align the new loop. After that we cut and fit the new loop. Overall we added 2 1/2" to make sure we had enough room. There may be a trans change coming and the new one will be slightly shorter.
Some welding and grinding and you would never know we made the error, well except for me telling you here. Oh well, it's all part of the process!
Next up is putting the cab back on the chassis and then putting the engine and trans back in. Just to make sure everything clears! Better safe than sorry. After that we go for the firewall! Thanks for looking!