k-member reinforcement

All great advice so far! :thumbup: I think the biggest one is get that sucker CLEAN. I used a degreaser on mine, pressure washed it, and still had some oil and grease come out of it. Not enough to really screw things up, but hot tanking it would be the way to go. Doing the seam welding around the edges really shows how much oil can get trapped in these things.

Dartnut is right on too about some of the factory welds. I went over pretty much all of mine on both of the K's I've done now. I used an FFI kit on the first one that I did for my EL5 Dart. Most of the kit parts fit ok, but you definitely need to do some fitting and grinding to get things right. It was enough that when I did the K for my Duster I just made the pieces myself.

Make sure you check the fit on the steering box before you finish welding in the steering box reinforcements. I didn't do this on the K I did for my Duster, and ended up having some interference issues when I reinstalled the power steering box :banghead:. The Flaming River manual box that's in there now has more clearance, but I'd still do a test fit before you finish that part of the welding. It's easy to get the brace a little too high, and it interfered with the "nose" of the steering box and kept it from sitting down all the way. Fortunately it wasn't much and I was able to "adjust" it a little with a BFH and a little clean up grinding on the casting seam on the steering box, but it would have been a lot easier if I'd done it right the first time. :D