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| You didn’t see this here! We were considering cutting and sectioning the subframe ears to get clearance after being unsuccessful at bending them. However we decided to try to carefully heat the crossmember with an oxy acetylene torch with a small tip to control the heat. We had to be careful because of a rubber bushing in the general area. Gary Castillo manned the torch. We also used wet rags to try to control the heat and keep it out of the bushing. In this picture you can also see that we had to cut a part of the front mudflaps out as well. The part of the mudflaps in front of the subframe ears had to go for tire clearance. |
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| After heating a small area to a cherry red, Pete goes to town with the hammer. Even with heating, it was hard to bend the super tough Toyota metal and it took many attempts of heating, hammering and reheating. The metal seemed to get harder and tougher with every try like we were forging it. The whole process took about an hour and we had to take turns hammering because we were getting tired. It was ugly but we gained about an inch of clearance and with some satin black Rustoleum paint, it doesn’t look too bad. No more rubbing. Seriously next time we will get the 305/50-20 tire and not deal with this stuff! Well, at least our bigger tire sure looks nice and with our low 4.40 tow package gear ratio, our truck isn’t bogged down. |
So the quest to get larger brakes ended up being a little more involved than we wanted but the truck looks great and the brakes are installed and kicking ass. Stay tuned, in the next installment we do a little suspension work with help from King Shocks.
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