Can I remove this cross member

[Jwill41]

Can someone tell me if I can cut out what I think is the 6 cylinder cross member? You can barely see it in the following picture. It is right under the front of the tranny and makes it almost impossible to remove the tranny from the bottom. I think most people remove it but want to be sure.

[Gee_Emm]

I just took mine out a week ago. All it is for is the manual tranny, the auto tranny x member will take its place :p

Good luck getting it out, I don't have my cab on and I took a cutting torch to the rivets and it still took me a couple hours to get it out.

[mindhive]

Just did mine today. If you have a compressor use a small cutoff wheel on the die grinder and cut a + or a - on the top of the top rivets and the bottom of the bottom rivets. Use an air chisel and some good hearing protection and chisel off the heads you cut. Then if you can get to the rivets that hold the bottom and top pieces together on the top or bottom of the x-member do the same to those. Then use the punch attachment to drive out the remaining parts of all the rivets. It should fall apart and come out really easy. If you cant separate the top and bottom pieces i think it will take smoe work to get out or you can torch it in half. It will take some time no matter how you do it but if you can get those pieces apart you are done when the rivets are out and you don't have to beat it out with the hammer.
Torching the rivet heads off may leave you with rivets that are now welded to the frame but I'm not very good with the torch.

Tim

[Jwill41]

Thanks everyone. I was concerned about "weakening" the frame. I will pull the tranny today and get out the torch.