Rear box portion- necessary?

I am doing a fair amount of cutting on my heep, and am about to start on my rear bumper. I obviously want it to be as high clearance as possible. I would like to angle up the ends as much as possible, but these boxes are in the way. How necessary are they? I dont know what it does or what it is for. Can I trim it? Should I box it in with 1/4" once I am done trimming it? Or is it fine to just hack it off and leave it? THanks for the structural help....

Unless I'm missing something, I dont believe that it will matter either way if you dont have some form of structure (ie: a Cage ) to replace what you have removed from the body & roof. W/O the roof boxing in the body like it was or a cage to replace it, it will collapse. You are going to cage it right?

Yup, cage is next...
So you think its fine to chop it off?
Isnt this part of the support for the rear shackle hanger? If I cut it off, how can I support that area again?
j

yea, didnt think about that, you could cut it out and and tie the spring hangers up into your cage, that should be stronger than the factory setup and provide better clearance if its done right.

That's part of the area that '97 and up units got extra metal in the form of a box. When I cut my lower quarters, I kept the box as is shown in your drawing AND kept a piece of the metal out to the edge of the quarter panel. Basically, I cut at an angle from the lower/outer corner of your boxes up to the outer/lower corner of your quarter panel. However, my rig is still completely intact other than the lower rear quarter chop and I don't have a cage. If you build a cage and place one foot directly over the shackle box, you could probably chop some of the box that you are referring to. I still wouldn't cut the back of the shackle box apart though if you are going to retain leaf springs mounted to shackles in the stock boxes. If you are going to ditch the leafs, then go ahead and remove whatever you want. I would still have some sort of reinforcement from the quarter panel boxes to the uniframe in the rear though. If not, what will keep the outer quarter panels from flopping around? Jeff

Hulk got a side shot? I didn't know the green machine went under the knife, di you roll it or just wanted to cut?

Don't know on the later models, like Jeff was talking about. Here's what I did on my '88. I reinforced the shackle boxes from the front with a section of big 1/4" angle iron, from the frame around to include the bolt hole. On the rear crossmember, I found cracks around five of the eight bumper mount holes, so I cut the bottom lip off (bottom of C channel) of the crossmember and mounted 1/4" plate all across it, and mounted the new bumper to that and to the eight mounting points. The bumper can't come off anyway since it's tied to the cage. Here's pics just for some ideas. Nice job on the chop, BTW.

Jeez both look like really really clean chops.

Thanks Goatman. Your rig had a lot to do with me wanting to chop mine.
I am curious about your brace, a few questions. Why do you have those two square holes in it? Is that where the gas tank straps enter? I would guess so, I just didnt go look at mine. Alos, did you also drill holes for the several other holes in the rear crossmember to bolt into? What size bolts are those? Did you just cut off the bottom part of the crossmember so you wouldnt need to worry about fitting in the 1/4" there? Can I leave it or do I need to cut it off?Seems that straight edge would add even a little stability. I understand how you wrapped the brace around to include teh bolt hole for the rear spring hanger, did you also weld it on? I would like to make my bumper removable so I am wondering if just adding a piece to include the bolt hole will be enough? Thanks for your help.
josh

Incredible Hulk said:

Thanks Goatman. Your rig had a lot to do with me wanting to chop mine.
I am curious about your brace, a few questions. Why do you have those two square holes in it? Is that where the gas tank straps enter? I would guess so, I just didnt go look at mine. Alos, did you also drill holes for the several other holes in the rear crossmember to bolt into? What size bolts are those? Did you just cut off the bottom part of the crossmember so you wouldnt need to worry about fitting in the 1/4" there? Can I leave it or do I need to cut it off?Seems that straight edge would add even a little stability. I understand how you wrapped the brace around to include teh bolt hole for the rear spring hanger, did you also weld it on? I would like to make my bumper removable so I am wondering if just adding a piece to include the bolt hole will be enough? Thanks for your help.
josh

Click to expand...

Yeah, the two holes are for the gas tank straps. The only holes I allowed for, and used, are the eight for mounting the bumper. I didn't leave a hole for removing the nut strips for the gas tank skid plate, but my bumper is tied to the cage and isn't coming off anyway, so to me it didn't matter. The small round things you see are pop rivets that I used to secure the plate to the crossmember, as well as the bumper bolts and welds on the ends of the plate. The hope was to secure the plate to the crossmember along it's whole length to minimize flexing of the sheetmetal stock crossmember.

Yes, I welded the shackle box reinforcements, to the frame and to the bottom edge of the shackle box. My shackle box was cracking in the corners on the bottom edge.

Have fun,