nineno
Newbie
I'll check it out. Based on the pics here in this thread it looks like a cool and capable work truck that was brought back from the brink. Very cool.Yep, same truck. It eventually became the all-black wrecker you may have seen me post already in other threads.
The gap you notice due to the fitment to the frame? It closes up when you tighten the bottom bolts.
Rich (@FLGS400) - I liked the McGaughy's notch design a bit more, also, and for all the same reasons you pointed out. (I will say, the DJM steel thickness is comical. It's 3/8" plate, I think.)I used the McGaughy's notches on my truck (like the Summit link above). I bought those for their complete frame coverage design (fits over the frame top and bottom), and their notch part looked a little sturdier to me. When installing, I pushed them up as high as they would go (bolted the bottom in first), and did end up with a very slight gap on the top rails.
The two details that caused me to stick with the DJM notch were:
1- not wanting to trim the bed cross rails -- admittedly a bit silly since I had just hacked the frame up!
2 - how much wider the C-profile of the McGaughy's notch was than the frame rail of the truck, and the apparent need for a shim. (I'll elaborate, below.)
Richard (@someotherguy) - My original description of what I was seeing with the notch width versus the frame width wasn't good, so I'm going to try this again with some added detail for you and Rich (FLGS400).
When I was preparing to notch my frame the inner width of the trailing/back end of the McG's notch was 1/4" wider than the outer width of the truck frame. I believe the truck frame tapers after the axle. The McG's notch assembly had holes in the bottom plates (before and after the notch) so that it could be bolted to the bottom of the frame rail.
This did not appear to fit my 1989 frame, and because I bought these (unused, in-box) from someone else, I assumed that I had a part that was not meant for a 1500 frame - maybe it was for a 2500 frame? (I had/have no idea how the frame thickness compares.)
At the time (early 2021?) I did do a little YouTube research, though. Here is a screen capture from a YouTube video that I've embedded below.
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The back of the truck is to the left. On the left, you can see a shim just below the tail light wiring harness and on the right you can see a thinner shim just behind the gas tank. This, in combination with the necessary bed modifications, encouraged me to stick with the DJM notches.
The good news is that I did, in fact, have notches for a C1500 OBS. More good news is that what I was experiencing was exactly the same as what the PowerNation crew was seeing!
Rich (FLGS400) - It seems like the difference is width that you experienced was much less significant. Is that true?
As a general question: Did the back end of 1500 OBS frames change during the production run? Do later trucks have wider ("taller") frame rails, or rails that don't taper towards the back? Perhaps the McG's parts were designed around a later frame revision?
I'll try to remember to throw a tape measure across the spare McG's notches and the frame rails of my truck to quantify my perception of a mismatch. There are certainly a lot of trucks with these parts installed, so this is likely "much ado about nothing," but it's very interesting to compare experiances.
For anyone interested in the whole video, it's embedded below. The screen capture above is at the 11m31s mark.
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Thanks for all the insights, guys!