Test Fitting the new Ridetech Crossmember to the frame:

 

I too am plenty guilty of doing that same type of repair but that is because I live in the rust belt and floors just seems to disappear overnight. LOL

I however thought I was buying a Rust Free Texas truck and even asked before I bought it if there was any rust or rust repairs done and I was told "NO" so finding a full patch panel on the drivers side which you can see light shine through from underneath and then the 4" wide repair on the passenger side that was only partially attached caught me by complete surprise when I pulled the carpet up. No matter, it just moved up my timeline for rebuilding it my way.

 

Ridetech Suspension going in:

 

More Ridetech progress:

 

Removal of the Radius Arm Crossmember (blue) and also the Transmission Crossmember (yellow). The radius arm crossmember will not be replaced and the trans crossmember will be replaced with a new tubular crossmember:

 

I had reached out to Ridetech when I purchased the front suspension kit and I spoke with super nice guy named Josh Gladish and asked him why I could not find any 460 motor mounts on the website. He told me that they had a set of prototype mounts but never had access to a truck to test fit them on. I told him my 1975 was a F150 Ranger XLT so it had Cruise Control, Air Conditioning, Power Steering, Power Brakes and a C-6 Automatic Transmission so if the mounts worked on my truck they would fit any less optioned truck. He shipped me a set and from the very beginning it was obvious they were not going to work. They were off by 1 1/2" and would not clear the drivers exhaust manifold. Plus once I solved that issue was when I found the complete lack of adjustability front to back issue. Another issue was the mounting angles did not match up with the Ridetech motor mount towers. Josh who is a very knowledgeable and helpful person and I spent quite some time sending pictures and drawings back and forth and I hand drew him some new prints after I modified the mounts.

 

Then I modified the mounts that Josh sent me.

 

Then after all the back and forth with Josh, he set up a three-way phone call so I could speak with him and the engineer who was actually working on these mounts and instead of a phone-call I got ghosted! I tried and tried reaching out via phone, email and text and Josh just quit responding. I even called the direct phone number and asked if something had happened to Josh and they said no. After many, many, many tries I finally gave up on the Ridetech Mounts and Josh Gladish and set his mounts aside and simply made my own. Here are my handmade mounts:

 

Once I got the mounts the way I wanted them I set my Boss 429 Mock-up Motor in the truck to get it ready to go to the chassis shop to get custom headers made. The mock-up motor is sporting an all aluminum Stef's custom oil pan made with extra thick aluminum sides and bottom and all the racing goodies inside, and a Billet Specialties Front Cover along with a Tilton Mini Super Starter. Check out the size of those intake ports. My boss at my job stuck his Red Bull can inside the port. It is HUGE! Speaking of HUGE, the header tubes will be 2 1/8" per cylinder.

 

I am a fan of this thread.

Surprised I don't see more B9 headed deals in dents and bumps.

Very cool that ridetech makes a front end for these trucks.

 

Thanks. I have been shocked for years that there are very few Boss 9's getting put in street driven dent and bump sides. Plenty of trucks on different racing circuits but it seems nobody is doing them for the street. I love a challenge and plan to daily drive this truck when I get done building it. The motor is getting built to be reliable for the street, over 830 HP and run a single 4 bbl on Pump Gas! I can't wait until that day arrives. Progress is slow but I am working on it as quickly as I can. Money is tight so that slows down progress a bit but I don't plan on letting me get too far behind schedule. Much more to come.

Josh at Ridetech was really helpful in getting me squared away with the front suspension and the reason I went with Ridetech over QA1 is how the motor is attached to the crossmember. Ridetech uses a supported through bolt whereas QA1 uses 2 pieces of metal bolted together which gives only one shear point. The bolt-through design Ridetech uses gives 2 shear points on each bolt instead of QA1's single shear! With as much torque as the new motor is going to make I was very concerned about shearing the motor mount bolts off the crossmember. I have done it before on my 1978 F150 4x4 with a mild 460 which had 1/2 the horsepower this truck is going to have.

 

Aside from the pain at the pump there is no reason not to drive it daily....they were driven daily almost 50 yrs ago.

Ridetech makes good stuff...great choice.

 

Well, living in Detroit nice vehicles do tend to vanish into thin air so there is that reason.

 

Now on to the steering column. I want to run a factory 3-spoke sport steering wheel which will not fit on a 1975 column. The first picture is the cheap 3 spoke wheel that came on the truck when I bought it. Then I picked up a freshly rebuilt 1978 steering column and then found out the mounting hole in the firewall is different so this will need to be addressed later. I bought a used factory 3 spoke sport wheel and sent it out to have it glass beaded and then get it re-wrapped. These are the before pictures on the Sport Wheel. Notice the left spoke has a chunk missing where it wraps are the metal. Here are the progress pictures for the column:

 

Then the next step was to remove the bed so I could access the 2 fuel tanks and remove them. The side tank will not be re-used as it is in the way of the four-link suspension so it has to go: