Crossmember and skid plates

[albino]

So I decided it is finally time to put some protection on the bottom of my truck.

 

I don't really like the construction of the 4x4 parts skid plates so I decided to design my own.

 

First thing on my list is to replace the factory crossmember with something a little more solid and square so that I can easily mount skids to it. Has anybody built a custom crossmember yet?

 

I took mine off the other week and took all of the necessary measurements. It is pretty beat up from scraping around so I am hoping that it is not too bent out of shape and my measurments are accurate.

 

Does anyone know how tight the tolerances need to be on all of the dimensions? I think I am going to add 1/16" to the diameter of each hole to account for the fact that I measured everything by hand. I just want to make sure that I don't tweak the alignment of the transfer case or anything. At the same time I dont want to make the holes too large and allow the transmission to move around. I am assuming since there is essentially a piece of foam between the crossmember and the transmission/transfer case that an eigth of an inch or so of missalignment would not be the end fo the world...

 

Any help would be appreciated.