Working on my '85 crew. Swapping out the body mounts, found a broken radiator support under the mount. My donor truck is intercooled. Do i weld up the support now, or wait till i drop in the intercooler and all? Also I have a broken read body mount perch. The perch has 3 rivets, where is the safest place to weld this back together without causing frame damage?

 

Couldn't you put some bolts where the rivets came out of? That might be better than a weld if you can get bolts in there.

 

Rivets are still all there. Just worn lose. Should I tack weld the lose rivets or drill them out and replace with bolts?

 

I would remove the rivets and replace with bolts.

 

I would also replace the rivets.

 

The rivet holes are a hair over 7/16" and I used 7/16" grade 5 bolts, hardened flat washers, and self locking nuts when I replaced the rivets on the crew cab project. [NO UGLY LOCK-WASHERS showing] Also in the "who really cares" department, the front frame brackets under the radiator support are the same stamping as the rear cab frame mounting brackets. They just look a bit different because of their surroundings.

 

there needs to be an interesting fact of the day section to put some of the things you say in ;-)

 

Here is a pic of what i got broken. See the crack along the hole for the body mounts. Should i weld it or is this something that will have to be replaced when an intercooler goes in?

 

I am bumping this because i plan to gt to work on it tomorrow and would like to know what to do.

1. Weld it up and replace body mount
2. Replace body mount for know and fix later with from IC truck when IC goes into

Thanks for taking a look folks.

 

If you don't have a spare, i would just weld it up, grind it flat and paint.

Drilling out welds and trying to get parts out is tough sometimes. i would probably still weld it up if i had a spare sitting around, in case my rear body mount went bad ;-) i'd still have it.

 

You need to find out why it cracked there. There may be some substructure issues going on. I believe there are two substructure layers below the crack. If they are rotted out there is a good chance it will crack again. That area rots out here in the rust belt. I have one that looked good in the truck until I removed the radiator only to see half of the top layer was completely rusted away.

 

I will check more for rot, however, I am currently deducing my grandfather chasing antelope out in the desert and jumping it a few times is the reason for the break.

 

Is this right? Why is the front body mount not using the perch? You can see in one of the pics that that the mount perch isn't used at all for the radiator supports. What's up with this? There are no signs of alterations or fab work, it looks stock.

 

That bracket is normally vacant. On 4x4s anyway. Don't know why.

 

I am ignorant. The 91.5 is set up the same way.