Take the time and clean it up nice…Once everything is clean you’ll be able to see all the spot welds. There is a lot of gunk under there and having everything clean is key. Once all the fuel and brake lines are out of the way it’s time to begin removing the old boxes.įirst, clean the entire area with brake clean or something similar (See figure 2). You might also want to plug the fuel lines so nothing gets in there. Be careful of dripping gas and hot drop lights. Everything is very flexible and we didn’t have ANY problems clearing this area or tying anything out of the way. Next, remove the fuel lines from the filter so they swing out of the way. 2 up top towards the back and 2 along the inside of the frame rail (See figure 1). I believe there are 4 clips holding them to the car. Next, you have to clear all the fuel lines. You need to remove the bracket with the “Y” and soft line and let that hang down and out of the way (NOTE: this bracket will have to be modified…more on that later). Lower the rear out of the way and move on. I’m not going to go into a detailed rear removal tutorial but after the brake lines and emergency brake cables are clear, support the rear with a transmission jack (or whatever) and remove all the control arm bolts from the chassis (leaving the control arms with the rear – ). It also helps to remove the flow tubes, mufflers and tailpipes so everything is clear. Most of it just peels back…if not use a scraper and a head gun or blow dryer if necessary…While you’re in the interior you’ll need to remove the seat belt bolts too! You’ll also want to clean most of the rubbery sticky insulation stuff off so the interior plates can mount flush and be properly welded. I had towels on the front seats and used cardboard to shield welding sparks. The passenger’s compartment carpet just needs to be pulled back a bit. Obviously the rear of the interior needs to be removed…this includes the seat backs, hinge brackets, the seat bottom, all the seat area insulation and the hatch area carpet. (Entire gallery of pics can be found HERE) This way, when I reference something, you’re familiar with what I’m talking about. I’d recommend checking out all my pictures before reading my install instructions. Ok, enough yapping and on with the install. Had I done the upper torque box reinforcements (aka battle boxes or torque box repair kits) I would have been ok but I only did the lower kit (at the time I did the lower kit no one even made a kit for the uppers). It’s beefy, not too difficult to install and has 3 mounting points for the upper arms. After ripping out my passengers’ side upper torque box at Atco in April 2008 it was time to get serious so I picked up the Wild Rides S-box (aka the Stang Box) to solve the problem.
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