Hey all,

I am doing a frame off restore of my 78 250. Assembling the truck now.

Cab, fender aprons, and core support is back on the frame.

I have a new set of body mounts, but they are different heights. I think I have their placement screwed up.

The bed mounts right on the frame. The bed is off the frame right now, but my only option is to lift the bed and put it on the frame and then match all my lines to the known/fixed position of the bed.

In an effort to save my buddies a trip to my house to help me place the bed, I was hoping to find measurements to save me the grief.

I am hoping to get lucky that someone here knows the stock heights of the body mounts under the rear cab, front cab, and core support so I can make mine correct.

Thanks in advance,

AL

 

I have a 1978. I used brand new polyurethane mounts and they came with a paper that showed the different height placements.
https://static.summitracing.com/glob.../ENS-17026.pdf

Tallest mount is rear of cab.

This was my process when I put my truck back together:

Mount the cab first, center it on the frame by measuring, and tighten all 4 mounts down to spec.
Doors are mounted to the cab and door gaps are finalized and bolts tightened for last time.
Then mount the rad support with its 2 bolts just finger snug.
Add inner fenders.
Add outer fenders.
Adjust, adjust, adjust, adjust panels to get your desired panel gaps, AND this is when you can add spacers under the rad support if needed to set the fender gaps.
Mount the hood hinges and then the hood, and adjust the hood latch and hinges to get hood to sit properly when closed, and line up nice with body lines.
The box/bed is put on last, this is when you will find if it lines up with the cab/front-clip body lines or not.
So if the bed is too low for body lines to match up and you have torqued the other mounts properly, then it is just add a big metal washer or make a rubber washer as a spacer between the bed and the frame.
If the bed is sitting directly on the frame and its bodylines are higher than the cab bodylines, then that is for someone else to relate their story of how they solved that, but I would think it would just be to add spacers to the cab and rad mounts.

 

Did you get new metal inserts as well, or just get new rubber / poly pieces?

I've seen a truck that tried to use just rubber without the metal inserts. it didn't work out well, no bodylines matched and door to fender gap was horribly mismatched.

 

That's what he's doing it sounds like, and just needs to know what height bushing/insulator goes in which location. To save the trouble of putting them on wrong only to find out that nothing lines up.

Are there three distinct sizes Arctic AL? Or only two? I was thinking there were three, but in looking at the kit we sell I only see two.
And of course, no instructions! That's what I went to my site to find because we usually post up the instructions that tell us that kind of stuff. But not in this case unfortunately.
Hopefully someone will have know which ones go where though.

Maybe check the Energy Suspension, Prothane, Poly, or that other one that I can never remember right off. Maybe one of them has instructions for their kits posted.

Good luck.

Paul

 

Here you go. Energy had instructions for theirs. As suspected they go largest to the rear and smallest to the front.

http://imagesrv.catalograck.com/imgVD/ENE/17026.pdf

Were you able to salvage the original hardware pieces or were they toast?

Paul

 

Thanks for the comeback fellas.

The new body mounts came with placement instructions and I verified that my mounts were in the correct locations and all the metal inserts are in.

My big hang up is that my core support seems to be about 3/4" too low, which throws off my fender lines.

Which led me to think that maybe the cab mounts should be shorter and my core support mounts should be taller.

I can adjust my fender apron 3/4" higher where it bolts to the cab but there is no way to lift my core support any higher without shims/washers. Which is why I am questioning body mount sizes.

With stock body mounts, I shouldn't have to shim the core support so the fender and door line up....or do I?

I am stuck till I figure out why my panels aren't lining up!

I fear that I may have to place the bed on the frame and work with that given line as I move forward and shim where needed I guess...

AL

 

1tonbasecamp,

Those are the replacement mounts I used and your link is the exact same instructions I have.

I completely destroyed the old mounts removing them.

Did anyone else need to shim their core support to make the truck lines correct?

AL

 

Even Ford shimmed the mounts. My passenger side front mount had about 3/8" of body-washers on top of it. And a little bit less on one of the other mounts.
I put them all back in where they were from the factory.

That 3/4" you're experiencing is quite a bit. And quite a bit more than I've seen from the factory. However, I've seen this time and time again with replacements. I just don't have any answers as to why mounts of the correct size will result in such differences.
The Early Broncos had all 8 mounts the same 3/4" tall. Yet you put in new poly mounts of the same height and you get doors that don't close, body lines that don't line up, all sorts of issues.

One thing that comes to mind is inconsistent torque on the fasteners, or inconsistent density and durometer of the poly bushings making some crush down farther than they should. Or stay up farther than they should.
This seems like a poor possibility for a full 3/4" however. Maybe that would get you a 1/4 to 3/8 inch at the most. But you never know.

Anyway, the bottom line is that if you verify that all the new cushions are in the correct orientation (which you did), and all of them are at the same height left-to-right, and that you've properly torqued them, then I would simply add spacers of the appropriate size to get you where you need to be for proper panel alignment.

I can't see anything inherently wrong (other than visually) with using whatever height you need, even if it's seems excessive. Every truck is different.

Paul

 

Are they new metal inserts, or old metal inserts? Old metal inserts may have needed some cleaning up and greasing so as to cinch down proper when torquing bolts. New metal inserts should be okay but still good idea to put some grease inthem, or the lube that came with new rubber mounts.

Are the core support rubber pieces reversed perhaps? Bottom piece on top and vice versa?

If all that is good then you are looking at having to use spacers or washers between bottom of core and above the mounts, to level out the front sheetmetal clip.