Hello all, been a while since I been around here. I've been sitting on everything I need to lift my rig in my shed for over a year now because work just hasn't allowed me the time to complete my build as it's my daily driver. Well now the time has come where my stock tires need replaced when I'm actually sitting on a new set of wheels and tires for my build...so I pretty much have no choice but to finish this thing haha.

Having said all that, I was wondering if any of ya'll had any tips or tricks you can share as far as drilling level and straight holes through the frame rails for the installation of crush sleeves for a cross member from the outside of the frame rails. What I'm trying to avoid is having to drop the tranny just to get the inner wall hole drilled for the crush sleeve bolts to line up with the cross member brackets. I have to go almost perfectly parallel through the outter and inner walls of the frame rails with a 1/2 bit and then a 3/4 bit on the outer walls for the crush sleeves which is the easy part.

Just go all the way through from the out side. You should be able to tell if your level with your eye. Worst thing is inside you may find an angled piece of material inside one piece angled at you the other side away from you, I think its for reinforcement for the seat mount, heck not really sure why its in there. Anyway, being that its on an angle you almost cant drill it properly. I had to sharpen a strong drift with my grinder and punched it through both with a two pound sledge hammer then plowed my way through with a bit I wasn't going to use for the finished hole. After I got that through I finished with my good bit, punching out the other side of the frame rail.

Try and use a high torque low speed drill, go steady and slow when cutting through metal, use plenty of cutting oil, and when you get near to breaking through, be very careful not to break your own wrist when the drill bit grabs and spins the entire drill around.

other than that you should be fine haha

Also if you use your chest to help push the drill like I did put some kind of cushion in between you and the drill. I cracked a rib and was sore for two months.

If you don't have one, go rent a right angle drill. Makes it 10 times easier. As stated above, use lots of cutting oil and go slow, and drill pilot holes and step up to your final size, it will go much smoother.

Depending on how many holes you have to drill, it might be worth making a jig out of some 1/4" ID tubing that you can square and clamp to the frame. Use an extended 1/4" drill bit to go through the frame then use a stepper drill to enlarge the holes to their final diameter.