The Plow Truck: 99 454 CCSB

[Supercharged111]

Yoinked the bushings and the one was destroyed. For as bad as it was, I was shocked that the other side was just fine.

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Luckily I'd grabbed 3 of these at the pull and pay already so good to go there. These are the same as the front cab mounts and those were destroyed on my clean 1500 back in 2018 so I expect them to be garbage on this truck. From there I used up the rest of my rust mort, must have done 6 or 8 cycles to get these **** and span.

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You can see the weld I added to that mount to repair the torn/failed razor thin factory weld. I believe it failed because the bumper wasn't bolted on here, those 3 fasteners would have held this tightly against the rail.

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Good enough for a plow truck I suppose. I would have painted already but my angle grinder died during my final cleanup so I guess that's my evening tomorrow before the weather tries to act like winter again.

 

[Supercharged111]

Finally finished up the last bit of cleaning. Here's how it was before the paint went down.

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After that win I dropped the body mounts in and went for the plow mounts which was not a win.

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Because of the repair performed by the PO the bottom of the frame was hanging too low for the side bolt holes to line up. On the driver's side you can see I was able to beat the frame upward and the short section curled. The passenger side did not respond the same and took a fuckton more force to get it to move. I'm not worried about the frame being bent where the mounts go because of their design, they sandwich the frame and make it a lot stronger up there. Plus I don't want to mangle these mounts in case they find themselves on another truck. Last thing I did was these bumper mounts bolts.

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Not pictured is why. The bumper mounts for the body lift don't have nuts welded to them, so this is the next best thing.

 

[Supercharged111]

Well somehow when I went to install these mounts for real stuff actually lined up. I'm guessing the mockup must have kinda smooshed it all into place.

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My fancy bumper bolts came out nice too.

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Got a few holes to drill now to get the extra fasteners in, but now the clamshell design should be apparent if you look inside the frame along with the strength it's going to add. Next hurdle is gonna be fabricating a new upper mount for that plastic thing that sits in front of the steering box. My best guess is that it helps guide air through the radiator so definitely gonna keep it.

 

[Supercharged111]

Small potatoes today. My free grill had a crack in it and the JB Plastic Weld did not hold.

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I think this'll do the trick.

 

[Supercharged111]

Yesterday I screwed around with the truck some more. First I had 6 holes to drill and bolts to add which Indid. Next I had to figure out how to secure the front plastic thingy.

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Don't zoom in too close on those crappy welds. I was going too fast as I was nervous about melting the plastic and causing more issues. Got the bumper on the 2 center mounts and went for the filler panel, nope. Loosen the bumper and now I can cram it all in there but it's tight on the right side. Debating the way ahead now, likely remove it and waller the mount some more so it has more range of motion.

 

[Supercharged111]

Removed that mount today and wallered it out some. Painted the fresh exposed metal and reinstalled. It got me enough clearance on mockup so I moved onto clearancing the air dam around the plow mounts. Easy peasy. Next I wasted a bunch of time wire brushing the bolts for it all nice and clean and rattle canning the tops of them. Greased the nutsert dealios and started slamming bolts home. 2 of the center bolts can't be reached without dropping the plow cross member and that peeved me so I cleaned up for the day. It's also worth noting that I robbed some hardware from a stock headlight to make my aftermarket one less floppy. One of the plastic dealies had broken and the housing had no up down support, kinda just rested on the grille. And the extra icing on the cake was the thermostat that been bugging me.

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Truck wouldn't get over 170. In a warm climate I'd say that's OK, but I need this to roast me out when I'm plowing driveways in -10 weather so a fresh 195 goes in. It gets better.

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That's thicker than it looks. One would think this is the extent of the buffoonery, and one would be wrong.

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How did we get here? Take a good close look at the first pic. That bolt with the needless washer stack is a 10x1.50 with factory being 3/8" NC. I was LIVID, then I decided to see how many threads extended beyond the ignorance. Plenty. So I grabbed the Dremel and a wire cup brush to clean the intake down in the groove, spiffed up the housing on the bench grinder wire wheel, and put it back together.

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Yet another detail, poorly pictured, is the ring terminal I installed to delete the bare wire that was crammed under the nut. Hopefully the hose foofs back out to its original shape.

 

[454cid]

Removed that mount today and wallered it out some. Painted the fresh exposed metal and reinstalled. It got me enough clearance on mockup so I moved onto clearancing the air dam around the plow mounts. Easy peasy. Next I wasted a bunch of time wire brushing the bolts for it all nice and clean and rattle canning the tops of them. Greased the nutsert dealios and started slamming bolts home. 2 of the center bolts can't be reached without dropping the plow cross member and that peeved me so I cleaned up for the day. It's also worth noting that I robbed some hardware from a stock headlight to make my aftermarket one less floppy. One of the plastic dealies had broken and the housing had no up down support, kinda just rested on the grille. And the extra icing on the cake was the thermostat that been bugging me.

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Truck wouldn't get over 170. In a warm climate I'd say that's OK, but I need this to roast me out when I'm plowing driveways in -10 weather so a fresh 195 goes in. It gets better.

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That's thicker than it looks. One would think this is the extent of the buffoonery, and one would be wrong.

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How did we get here? Take a good close look at the first pic. That bolt with the needless washer stack is a 10x1.50 with factory being 3/8" NC. I was LIVID, then I decided to see how many threads extended beyond the ignorance. Plenty. So I grabbed the Dremel and a wire cup brush to clean the intake down in the groove, spiffed up the housing on the bench grinder wire wheel, and put it back together.

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Yet another detail, poorly pictured, is the ring terminal I installed to delete the bare wire that was crammed under the nut. Hopefully the hose foofs back out to its original shape.

Wow! That's horrendous. I'm glad you were able to get that fixed up fairly easily.

 

[RichLo]

Oh No!

Start shopping around for a new intake manifold on ebay, that's not going to hold on very long with most of the threads busted clean off. Unless thats what you meant when you said there were plenty of threads left?

 

[Supercharged111]

Only about half were snapped off, I feel fortunate in that respect. I ran a tap down to the bottom of the hole to clean it out. I didn't expect there to be that many more threads remaining so it doesn't seem sketchy to me. Yesterday I got the outer body lift bumper mount dealies cleaned and painted, air dam trimmed, filler panel in, and then the fun began. Since the outer mounts are now tight, I can't simply lift the bumper up to get the correct angle of attack. I need to lift on the thing somehow but can't really get to anything to do so. I'm at the point now I feel it would have been easier to have removed the body lift than keep it. That plus the plow mounts means I can't get to anything. It's insanely frustrating trying to get this all to line up halfway close.

 

[454cid]

Are you missing a ground wire that should be under the bolt on the right? Normally, each stud gets one.

Here's mine

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