Frame rail replacement help

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AbodyNewbie

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as always these old cars are full of surprises....
When we first started tearing the car down we knew the front clip had to be replaced (which came with the car) and the floor pans. Once we had the car welded to our jig we removed the old clip and floor. The rear frame rails were also going to be replaced but we figured we’d do the front end first so we could get all our measurements from them to place front clip. Well now we can see that the inner rockers are toasted too. We ordered new ones from AMD along with a truck full of other stuff too. The inner rockers run from pretty much wheel well to wheel well....so what do we do. Do we cut the new rockers in half and continue to put in new firewall and front clip then move to back? Or do we remove the leaf spring brackets (getting new ones of those to....might as well going this far!) and replace the whole rocker in one piece. I’m just worried keeping all the measurements true and everything in line.
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Do you have the factory Chassis Manual with the dimensions? That and a friend with an A body to measure against. Best of luck man, I admire the dedication. The repo stuff is sometimes slightly different from factory, so measure twice, then again.

Can the outer rockers stay together as a reference? Keep any good factory metal and trim the AMD stuff as needed.
 
Do you have the factory Chassis Manual with the dimensions? That and a friend with an A body to measure against. Best of luck man, I admire the dedication. The repo stuff is sometimes slightly different from factory, so measure twice, then again.

Can the outer rockers stay together as a reference? Keep any good factory metal and trim the AMD stuff as needed.
Yes we have the manual and we have a neighbor with an abody rust free on a rotisserie that we can measure too. Outer rockers are good.
 
@Oldmanmopar has a lot of information on how he pulled the front clips off. Search his name, hopefully you can find something that he posted that will help you.
 
Nice to see someone going this far to save one of these cars!
I have a similar project coming up on my '69 Cuda this summer.
Could I ask you to post more pics of your bracing setup? I'm trying to figure out how to brace mine up.
 
since it's all welded down on the table, and provided it's straight to start with, i don't see how you'd have much problem getting everything back where it belongs. with the chassis manual you should be good. i wouldn't put too much faith in measuring off the other one, there's a lot of variance in these
 
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Nice to see someone going this far to save one of these cars!
I have a similar project coming up on my '69 Cuda this summer.
Could I ask you to post more pics of your bracing setup? I'm trying to figure out how to brace mine up.
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Basically it’s some old scaffolding....added some tubing under the rockers and cross bracing from left to right. Once the scaffold was squared up and levelled we bolted it to the floor. Squared car on the jig and welded it on. Pretty stiff.
 
since it's all welded down on the table, and provided it's straight to start with, i don't see how you'd have much problem getting everything back where it belongs. with the chassis manual you should be good. i wouldn't put too much faith in measuring off the other one, there's a lot of variance in these
Car was very straight to start with....doors and truck still open and close good. Gonna cross brace interior before we go to much further.
 
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Basically it’s some old scaffolding....added some tubing under the rockers and cross bracing from left to right. Once the scaffold was squared up and levelled we bolted it to the floor. Squared car on the jig and welded it on. Pretty stiff.
Thank you for posting those pics! Gives me some ideas. I agree that @Oldmanmopar would have some good input here.
 
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