well!
this morning I gave into Paraphoe!
I raised my front bumper.
it really didn't look that hard! I was going over the booklet that came with the body lift for the f-150 and I was kinda stumped here and there being it was for a different truck.
but all in all having done them before I figured it wouldn't be that hard to lift the bumper! right?
that was the understatement!
o.k. so first I sprayed all the bolts with PB blaster to get things cooking while I dug out the jack and the tools.
getting the bumper off was the easy part! but when I got it leaned out enough to see what was going on behind the mass of metal I found my support brackets for the corners were all but rusted away!
no big deal! I can make some later on when it is all set up and installed back on the truck! so I proceeded to pull them off. the driver side was still in one piece so I have a template to make new ones.
then I had to remove the driving lights and their brackets. it seems that the frame horns were running into them and was holding the whole project up!
one bolt broke and two of them came out with no problems. the last one the head stripped off!
out came the grinder for the first time!
so again I tried to fit the bumper into it's new home. but no go! here the outside frame/bumper mounting bracket was hitting the plastic valance that covered the driving light area when they are installed in their brackets on the bumper.
out came the grinder again!
I cut the outside frame/bumper mounting tabs off so it would clear the valance. so now I had to figure out the brackets that were going to hold the bumper to the truck.
the inner bumper mounts lower hole were exactly three inches of lift! so all I had to do is just take out the clips, run bolts in and I would be good to go right? wrong!
the wholes did in fact give me three inches that I needed. but the end of the frame horn stuck out about an inch.
the metal plate that came with the body lift for the front bumper needed to be bent a little to make it work.
I over bent the brackets but it was nothing that my vise couldn't handle. and since the wholes in the plate lined right up with the bumper mounting holes I was on a roll! wrong!
I had to find bolts long enough to space the bumper out enough to catch the frame horn because of the bump out on the end!
thank god for the body bolts! which are the same size and thread as the bumper bolts just longer!
so I installed the two plates with the factory bolts on the top of the bumper and I stuck my body bolts through the bumper from the front, through the lift plate and I stuck one bump nut on and tightened it up all the way.
one was not enough so I backed another nut on to give it the space needed. so I slid the bumper into place and tightened it up so that I could get proper alignment side to side.
now the bumper leans out some, but I have to make a plate and pick up the center hole on the lift plate so I can pull the bumper back into place at the top.
just haven't dicided if I want to weld a bracket to the top of the frame horn to do this.
but here she is attached to the truck for another week!
