Broken frame… what to do?

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That is unfortunate. Truck otherwise looks good from the photos. Worth saving if you can.

 

You just need to make sure the frame is square while putting it back together with an angle finder and / or laser level and it would be a good idea to go through the whole thing while you’re at it. You can gusset weak points with 1/8 - 3/16 steel along with the saf-t caps.

 

How solid is the rest of the frame near the break?

I really can not tell from the pictures. But it looks a bit rotten.

you need a professional welder to look at that frame and tell you if it will even hold a bead.

brush and clean all the rust from the inside of that part of frame and take some pics from the inside.

 

His father in law is a welding inspector.

 

Ive seen a car or two give up the ghost and "spontaneously" disintegrate while on the freeway. It's not something that I would want to experience first hand.

If the only piece of structural steel that stands between the tarmac and my cheeks is, uh, ^^^that, I'd be taking the bus. No way would I splint and twine that frame back together and call it good. If I were to take it to a professional, all it would take for me to realize it was done would be if a single corner of their mouth were to draw out into a grimace. I wouldn't even need words at that point.

I admire the tenacity. I sympathise with the budget. But when speed is involved, I want confidence in the structure I'm trusting my life to. That's just me.

 

I've worked with a ton of welding inspectors through my welding career of 50+ years that couldn't strike a arc much less weld, all book learning no hands on like in the past.

 

Didn't like the way the other thread was going, eh? I'm no expert welder, but I wouldn't bother. The couple of pics of the breaks show not enough good metal left to weld to.

 

My experience with these frames is that they're usually exponentially worse there where they break. The stupid shock mount brackets and little boxed sections hold a ton of salt/mud/moisture. Pretty good chance yours is repairable. The first one I repaired was in excellent shape everywhere but the known problem areas. My current truck had next to no rust anywhere except inside of the shock mounts and boxed sections. Even with the bed off and the fuel tank dropped it was impossible to wash those sections out completely. The lower boxed section is probably fine. Even if the rear half isn't ok, it's probably easier to buy some 2"x3" tube and make a new frame. Everything from the front cab mounts behind the front tire rearward on these frames is extremely simple and not hard to fabricate a replacement.

 

Fair enough. The welding isn’t as important as keeping everything square on this - it’s only 10 gauge and those sad-t caps are easily enough to fix it. The rest is time and effort with a wire wheel.

 

this is a better product for that area than the saf t cap. It contains new bolt holes because yours will mostly get damaged when removing the cross member. The safe t cap version of this panel is made to slide over gas tank crossmember holes

 

I still say fix it. As said above, get it straight and lined up, cut out the bad, and replace with sections of steel. You can do the SafeTCap method as well. Both are solid choices. People are way too quick to jump on the "replace the frame" train, in my opinion.

 

Hell yes! Now we're talking!