Hello all! About a week ago I wrecked my truck on my way home from work (Battle Born Brakes). The front end got crunched pretty good. Frames not bent luckily. Lookin for some insite into rebuildin er and gettin er back on the road. Also looking for parts around Vancouver Washington area. Thanks!

(I'd like to keep this cab)

 

Sorry to hear about your accident, with the cowl damage that is going to be a rough repair. Might be time to source a complete SC parts truck. Or at least a reg cab, (parts cab) and go to cutting and welding if you just have to save the original cab.

 

So the front pass side leaf spring to axle u-bolts sheared?

That's an impressive hit.

Glad you're ok.

 

hope everyone is safe after that one... side note, i don't see the SD axle swap kit or the brake booster kit. they don't hook you up when you work there?

 

Damn! What did you hit?

 

I'm sure it's going to be a lot of work to replace that cowl piece but I really want to preserve the original cab and I'm kinda in it for the long haul already on this truck. I'm probably going to pick up a single cab in ok shape for patch panels.

The u bolts didn't shear on the pass side it was the stud that holds the leaf pack together that sheared off and shoved the axle back

I'm only 16, so even though my boss does give me a really good deal on the parts, I just don't have the money currently to do the swap. The profit margins are already extremely thin on our kits so cutting the price more would put us behind a fair bit.

Anybody in the area have a good front clip? I'm willing to drive a good distance if it's the right deal. Thank you all

 

No one was hurt in the accident. A lady in a small SUV slammed on her brakes to make a turn and the van behind her slammed on his brakes barely avoidkng the collision but I just didn't have enough time to stop and slid right into the back of the van. It was a large HVAC companies ram van

 

Glad/hope all is ok personally physically/bodily wise ok. Side bar question, how did you get those HMMWV rims to fit on the front? I though they were 7" backspaced. Did you run spacers? Or have they been recentered?

Time to reach out to your FTE state chapter members for parts locating help. Washington: https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/forum188/

 

I got the cheapest RC 4 inch lift kit and then a set of 2 inch spacers and the only interference is she'll run on the headers on full lock

 

Thank you for confirming 2" spacers. Hope you locate the parts and get it back on the road soon. Keep us posted on your progress.

 

Honestly, I know the spacers get so much hate, but that wheel got hit hard enough to shove the whole axle back but the spacers are fine 🤷‍♂️

 

What's the rear of the door line look like? Does it still open and close? It didn't break the windshield, so I'm gonna guess the cowl is the worst part of it and it didn't push the pillar back so the cabs not totally F'ed, but that's still not an easy repair. I just dissected a parts cab for the cowl and firewall and honestly, I'd rather do a cab swap then cut all that apart and try to get it all lined up correctly again, and I've done professional collision repair. The cowl, pillars,firewall and inner pillar/air boxes all come together in the lower windshield / door pillar area and overlap each other in multi panel seams. I'm only keeping this cowl as a last ditch resort in case something like this happens in the future. If you can get it into a body shop with a frame machine, they should be able to straighten the cab, at least enough to be able to open and close the door and bolt on a nose so you can get it driving again.

Spacers are an issue when they are used to move the tires center too far away from their stock location, like 3" spacers with high offset 14" wide rims you see on alot of trucks. Using them to fit rim to a stockish location is fine. The other issue is when people don't go through all the re-torques after installing them. I was taught to check them at 100, 500, 1K and 3K miles, then at every oil change, or 3K, whichever came first. And if you ever remove them you need to do it all over again.

 

So the passenger side door would not shot all the way and would just jamb. The rear of the door was about a 1/2 inch too far back. Today I took a come a long and hooked it from the mounting bracket for the front clip and connected it to the frame horn and gave er a Hank and it already started pulling the dent out a substantial amount. The door now opens and closes properly but it's still about a 1/8 inch too far back. I also used the same method to yank the axle forward and into it's proper location and not wedged into the cab. I'm going to move the truck so it's facing a tree and I'm going to snatchblock off the tree with a winch and slowly pull out the dent some more. Using light heat and some body hammers. Very gentle and very slow. Also, is there a way to get a hammer behind that cowl? I'd much rather try to hammer it out from the back then fiddle around with those weld on studs you put the slide hammer on. Just seems like you could get a better result from behind. Overall I think it's a very fixable thing even though it looks bad. Definitely going to need some body filler in the end but want that to be as minimal as possible. Thanks for the input. Id go somewhere with a frame machine but I just can't afford what we all know they'd charge me

 

Hammer behind the cowl...you ever pull a dash out of a truck. it has to come out any way to get to all the pinch seams.




And I bet that is not 100% going to work, because the cowl is a tube like bucket.