well a local guy was gonna pull one for me and he sent me a picture, his was a wierd 1 piece one that bolted to top and bottom frame rails, kinda like the other one in the picture. Frame looked to be different thickness and the holes were in the wrong place. Looks like I might as well head to the junkyard when the weather allows and see if I can find one there... if anyone has the kind like in that first pic, with 3 rivets on top and 2 on the bottom on each side, let me know.

 

I'll have my parts truck here some time Sat. so I'll take a pic & email it to ya

 

ok... I'm gonna head to the junkyard in a few minutes and see what they have, they had scrapped all their 70's 4x4 1/2 tons for some reason, the last time I was there, but I'm gonna bring my tape so I can measure the 3/4 tons. I'm not holding out much hope that the 2wd one will be the same, I've looked at a few and they have all been different.

 

lol. yeah they crushed all the a bunch here in my area right before the scrap price's dropped last week. I hear it dropped $40 a ton and is gonna drop another $40-$50 late this week or early next week

 

I pulled one off a 79 F250 after measuring. Its identical to my 78 F150. They only charged me $16 bones for it, not too bad, though the truck only gave up the crossmember after going through 2 batteries, driving to tractor supply, buying an inverter, charging the batteries, and going through them again with the grinder. I needed that leaf spring mount too, so I tried the drill and a new set of Rigid heavy steel bits from home depot. The drill seemed to prolong battery life vs the grinder, and I was able to drill out 3 of the rivets holding the spring holder on before my last battery gave out at 4:00 PM. I was able to grind down the last rivet a bit with the very last of the battery life, and then I used a sharp prybar as a chisel and a 2 lb ball peen hammer and smashed the rivet until it gave up its hold. All told, I was there for around 3.5 hours, but that included a lot of running back and forth to the truck to swap batteries, until one of them wouldn't hold a charge anymore.

But, I got the parts I needed, and for a grand total of $22, i can't complain. Hopefully I can find my other rear spring mount, I'll just use the bitched up one that I have for now. This will get me back on my wheels, out of the yard, and back into "legal" as far as the HOA goes.