Well I have finally removed that crossmember. Not a very easy job! I have not yet been able to grind flush the welds on the top of the chassis under the body. I don't have a tool that can get in there and I don't have enough floor jack to lift the body up enough to make a difference, even with 18'' of wood stacked on top.
I was not expecting a sawzall to be the weapon of choice on something like this but it worked great, I did go through about 20 bucks worth of blades! I was able to do the extraction and do zero damage to the body which was really what I was shooting for.
I got shielding gas for my welder, so all that is left to do is to get the new part and weld it in. I will have to make an extension cord to get from the laundry room to the driveway, I suspect that will set me back about 300 bucks. I got no idea what 75 feet of 8-4 cable costs at home depot. Maybe 10-4 will work, not sure. Going to have to do a little investigation into that.
Some pics of the job, I had to cut it out in a bunch of pieces to keep the blade going in a safe direction. All in all i'd say it took about 4 hours to get it out after you get the bumper s*** off and the spare tire out.
An important reference mark that I will need when I stitch the new one in.
This DeWalt sawzall is badass, well chew through just about anything.
After the accident there was a tremendous amount of stored spring energy in the crossmember, at one point I had three blades stuck in it. Too pissed off at that point to stop and take a picutre, funny how that always works.
Scrap metal!
The exposed welds were super easy to cut out.
LHS, did an o.k. not touching the paint in most areas, but as you can see there was some damage. Anyone know what chassis paint will match up?