got the left side done. bought a Hitachi grinder.... effin love it with a thin metal cutting disc. and as i worked to cut the right side.... sigh... the disc broke. the hitachi came with 5 discs... GRINDING discs... they are a little too thick. anyway, i wish this damn welder was a little hotter, but i worked around it. sigh, still working on the right side as of now. right half of the right frame got cut through, still need to do left half of right frame.... i need to borrow a hotter welder some other time..... clean up the current welds.
http://www.toyotaminis.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5387 http://www.toyotaminis.com/forum/showthread.php?t=6097
Props for getting in there and gitten 'er done! The main thing I do when I notch is put the front on stands, then jack the rear up and place stands under the frame in front of the leafs, (front of the bed, rear of the cab) then as soon as the truck lowers down onto those rear stands, keep the very rear supported right when it touches those rear stands. Keep the jack under the bumper (or spare tire crossmember on trucks with roll pan) because these trucks have bed sag if unsupported. Then I undo the shocks and shackles and drop the entire axle assembly onto the ground. I also remove the spare tire. I usually do the right side completely before I move onto the left side. Keeping the bed sag out and doing 1 side at a time will ensure a perfect job and your body line will match up. As thin as these frames are, they're still amazingly strong. and btw, I too use a hand grinder with cut off wheel because I simply can't afford a good portable plasma cutter yet.
I pretty much did everything, except for dropping the rear shackles. I got the inner shackles off... and nothing budged since then so i slapped those back on. I put a jack and supported the crossmember like you did too. If I had a plasma cutter... I think my project would've been finished in a good 2 hours. or even less.
That's a good point a plasma cutter would save time. That would be a good tool to have. A word of advice for buying grinder discs. Buy a box of them if you can because you save yourself money per disc that way. I was walking into the store every other day getting 3 or 4 discs at a time. Not very smart. The grinder discs you had I think are meant for notching pipe and stuff. Where the really thin ones are perfect for cutting like butter. And I use the thicker ones for cleaning before and after welds. Bushings for the shackles might be a good idea.
Yeah, i looked at the grinding discs... No way i could get anywhere with those. So i went and got more cutting discs. its amazing how fast you can cut
k wheres the pics at for play by play on what your doing? So the rest of us that want to do this dont have to ask the same questions you did again when we go to do it.
