Nose Job

We left off where I set the cab down onto Jack's frame. Now, I knew the bed wouldn't bolt right on and I'd have some work cut out for me, but it was a shocker to realize that the cab didn't even fit right. As it turns out, the Highboy chassis even changed the rear cab mounts to the external part of the frame on separate perches rather than just using the traditional inside crossmember style. What sounds like "not that big of deal" turns out to be a "pretty big deal".


I was planning on just drilling new mount holes in the floor of the cab and using my existing mounts, but that turned out to not be so hot of an idea as there is plating under the brace to brace up the cab where those outer mounts would be that was missing from the dark blue cab. Whoops. So, I decided to use the original mount location and drill my crossmember for the transfer case to line up with the stock location of the cab.


The only problem was- I knew darn well those original cab mounts were not coming apart on the '76 frame, so out I went to the 77 chassis that every single bolt and nut has come off of like butter. The mounts are pressed together, and usually with a socket of the right size, and an appropriately large hammer (sledge) you can drive out the lower steel retaining cup from the upper bushing. So I thought... It went something like this:


1. Drop socket into bushing
2. Swing large hammer
3. Hope you hit socket
4. Watch socket recoil and hope to miss face
5. Walk between 20 and 50 feet to retrive socket
6. Repeat process.


About 30 minutes later and a broken sledge hammer handle from a near miss, I had the bushings out and they were in pretty good shape. What I had to do since they were a slightly different style was take a grinder and take the lip that normally goes through the frame hole and cut it off flush because there was no way I was going to be able to make a 2 inch hole in the transfer case crossmember without completely lifting the cab back off. As long as the impregnated steel was still in there, it'd be fine.


I set the cab back down on the frame, lined them up, drilled the mounting holes, put my 1 inch aluminum spacer blocks in (so I have room for bed relocation brackets) and was golden. Or so I thought until I couldn't find bolts that worked.


Could somebody please tell me why hardware stores do NOT carry 7/16 bolts? And if they do, why are they always crap grade-2? So, I needed 7/16 x 5 1/2 inch grade-5 at least to mount the rear of the cab. I decided to hop on the internet really quick and just order a box of 10 from a huge nut & bolt dealer. Oh- they are out of stock and will have some sometime next week. Grr.


Back to the front clip. I figured I could spend my time aligning the front end to the cab, even if I did only have to use the front cab mounts to hold it down. I'm not like my buddy Stu- I've always been the mechanical guy of my group of friends. I can't seem to ever make anything look good, but I sure can make it work and run good.


Something I desperately wanted to do was make the body lines on this truck PERFECT like the factory so you couldn't tell it was ever apart. I spent the next hour measuring, squaring, nudging, bumping, cussing, loosening and retightening that front clip until it was.... perfect. I call it a night.