I just thought about it and

If I were to run a 3" Body Lift on my 03 Screw and them put a brush guard on it the headlight and stuff would not mount up in the spots on the brush guard??? Because the mounting place for the brush guard is on the frame but only the body would be lifted so the brush gaurd would stay down and the body level.

Does anybody see what I am saying and have a solution?

 

people say you can fabricate brackets for them. im not sure where, but there is a solution. Hopefully someone can chime in here. I have a bull bar and the same concerns.

 

OK so what I said made sense? Because you understood it.

 

I am staying away from a body lift for 3 reasons.

#1. I am unwilling to lose my brush guard. I love the thing.
#2. I am planning on adding a front receiver for a winch, a body lift would interfere with that.
#3. My transfer case is floor shifted, and would require custom linkage, dramatically reducing the cost benefit of body lift / vs suspension lift.

Body lifts work for some guys, for others they are not the best choice. I guess if you wanted to custom fab up some brackets or something it might work...

 

Ok so making a bracket would work????

 

basically what you need to do is get some steel stock and design what you need. nothing fancy just something strong enough to support your brush guard and handle some impact should you take a front collision. i had a 3" BL on my explorer and the headlight beam was "cut" by the brush guard.

basically what i did was take two pieces of square stock and two pieces of 1/2" flat stock. welded the square stock to the frame above where i mounted the brush guard originally and used the flat stock to make up the difference where needed for added support on the brush guard. i cant give you exact directions as I'm sure the f150 frame is alot different than an explorer. I used a 6011 rod with my arc welder, i would imagine you could mig weld it but I've never been a fan of mig welding so i have limited expirence and knowledge there.

all i can say for sure is you need to make sure however you fab this up it needs to be rather strong if you go cheap and end up taking an impact in the front end that brushguard is going to plow through your front end pretty fiercely.

 

Got any pics or diagrams on that?

 

I will be fabricating brackets to run a brush guard on my f150 because I have a 3" BL. Any shop or experienced welder should be able to do it pretty cheap. I know of at least 2 guys on here that have done it on their F150's with body lifts, hopefully they'll see this post and chime in.

 

sorry no, i sold the truck about a month ago and never took many pics of the truck.

 

sorry no, i sold the truck about a month ago and never took many pics of the truck.

as much as i would love to help you design something i have absolutely no clue how a brushguard mounts to a f150. if its the same or even similar to a explorer all you really need to do is make a place for the frame of the guard to mount to that is 3 inches higher than it was before. drill some holes and reuse the old bolts. ive heard the bull bars require tow hooks to be removed though.

 

yes i see what you are saying...however, the brush guard should move up with the bumper to the new mounting points on the body lift brackets...my setup works great...but if this is not the case for you, you can always have the brush guard modified slightly...I'll take pics and post soon...

 

You've got me confused now. I am going to be doing this mod next summer. The brush guard mounts to the frame correct, not the front bumper, that was my understanding. When a BL is installed, the front end sits 3" higher off of the front frame where the tow hooks are. So by using the front frame to mount the brush guard, it is still going to sit 3" lower than it normally would on a stock f150...hence the fabbed brackets to make up for the 3" difference. That was my understanding.

Did you mount your brush guard to your front bumper instead of the frame? If so, then I can see where there would be no need for fabbed brackets. Can you clarify what you mean? You must have drilled through the bumper to mount it correct, instead of on the frame?

 

You will have to fabricate some brackets to raise the brush guard 3 inches if it is the type that mounts to the frame, and most are.

 

negative space ghost...my guard is mounted to the frame...maybe it was just pure luck, but mine moved up with the bumper and found new mounting holes in the frame and mounts that hold the bumper on...my guard is from a local manufacturer back home, and i guess they had a body lift in mind when they designed it...bad news is they went out of business...so you will probably have to build a custom bracket...i have also seen the guard bolted through the bumper...check out my gallery as i have posted pics there for clarification

 

yes, that's strange. I had never heard of a brush guard being made for a Body Lift. Everyone I always talked to with a BL and a brush guard had to fab brackets. Maybe it's a 4x2 thing or just the way your local shop designed it. Kudos for you though for not having to do anything special to get it on there.

I have seen them mounted to the bumper and it looks like **** IMO. But that's just me. I could only image where that would end up in a front end accident.

Anyway, I think you might be the exception to the rule. Everyone who runs this set up that I've talked to (about 4 or 5 people) who have 4x4's and BLs, have needed to fab brackets.

BTW, your truck looks pretty rugged. I remeber seeing it on here before. I like it. Is it your DD or just something to mess around in?