My box is as far forward as it can go w/o major cutting. I did have to notch out a bit of the sheet metal up front to access the p/s line fittings:


Allpro pitman arm.

On the welding, you want to avoid long vertical weld beads as you create a stress riser there due to the abrupt transition from the ~1/8" thick frame steel to the now ~3/8" or thicker steel with the plate installed. So I mainly weld along the top and bottom of the plates and any places that go down the frame, I try to either have the plate angled or somehow break up the long bead. So for example weld down 1" from the top and up 1" from the bottom and leave a 1" gap in the center.