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It was nice just seeing the chassis (it's been a while). But, getting reaquainted allowed me to notice some items that were not quite up to par so they'll need to be addressed once I get back on it. Mainly just some hardware items that were oxidized/rusted already so just detail stuff.

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I agree, it would be great to see this up & going again! I know that feeling of getting reacquainted, & I'm really hoping to get back to mine soon as well.

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If the seats are in the cab i would love to see how they look! I have a set, and was wondering if the 67 68 bracket bolts up in the 66 cab??

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Bump for a cool truck!

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I apologize.... I never saw your request for pics. The seats are in the cab but they're covered up in plastic & the truck is basically a rolling shelf/storage table for misc parts while my dually & the el camino are dis-assembled.

The dually is nearing the end of it's revitalization & the el camino should be headed home by end of the month so the 64 is about to get some attention. I can get you those pics then.

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Thanks dude!

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Dusting this off. My goal was to have the exhaust finished up by the first of this year so I can get to swapping the body over.

I made good progress getting everything plumbed through the T/A x-member but then plumbing the tubing within the packaging restraints slowed progress significantly. My buddy Danny (Painter D) has been busting butt on his latest project which stoked my fires. I pushed hard last week to finalize everything & really liked what I had laid out. I had everything from the T/A x-member back tacked together & the only remaining thing was to finish the placement for the back half exhaust hangers but I was @ a roadblock. I came back to the shop Monday AM & w/a different day came a new idea.

I was excited that I had my plan & could now order the remaining parts. I placed my order through Summit & then went back over @ lunch to take some pictures & it hit me like a head-on collision @ speed..... My layout immediately after the T/A x-member failed to account for the positioning of the rear cab wall. Since my frame is Z'd, this is fairly important. Talk about getting the wind knocked out of your sails.

After work, I took multiple measurements & the routing path I took was just not going to work w/o cutting up the back of the cab. I used 45° elbows which allowed a nice/smooth transition but required too much area/length to go from the T/A x-member exhaust ports up to the mufflers (about 6-7" difference). I pulled everything on the back half back apart to try & re-clock the mufflers to reduce the gap. No go.... The mufflers are as high as comfortably possible while allowing airflow for cooling & space for clearance. Rotating them caused them to be too high, killed the hanger plans, & would require re-working the tail-pipe sections as well.

I walked away for some dinner & had a couple of beers. I went back & did some additional measuring. I ran a string line to lock down my limitation (back cab wall/support + ~1"). I removed my 45° pieces & did some more math. By 1am this morning I felt I had worked around the issue but now it will take some tedious grinding as the pieces I need to use were all cut from demo'd pipe so they aren't 'true/square' cuts.

Regardless.... the mufflers stay in the same spot which means the hanger portion (& parts ordered) won't change nor will I have to re-pipe from the mufflers back. I hope to have things tacked-up by the end of the week when the hanger parts arrive. Once they are in place, we can yank everything & do the final welding & clean-up on the outside surface of the exhaust.

Progress!

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I'm glad to see your progress here! It motivates me to get mine moving.

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Thanks. I've had my chassis back @ my shop since about April '16. I had hoped to get back on it sooner but my DD 90 got whacked which forced my dually into DD service before it was quite done. Been chipping away @ the dually list & did a SS exhaust on a 56 Chevy wagon for a buddy in a labor swap (he fixed & painted my banged-up 90/I paid for the parts; I did his exhaust/he paid for the parts). Once all that was done, I've been trying to move forward on this dusty project.

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Glad to see you back on this one. You think you can have it together for C10's in the Park this year? If you need help with the body swap, give me a shout. I am still interested in getting that LWB frame...

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Not sure on C10ITP but you never know.

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Glad to see you back on it & making progress! Hoping to post some much overdue updates on mine soon as well.

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Boom, driver side is 95% good to go. I still need to tack the very last straight piece as I had to shorten that section since the use of the 90° elbows still required shifting the muffler back. It is followed up w/a another 90° section & just stops there for now. I need the bumper & brackets on before I can route the final tail pipe section.

Now back to correct the pass side. Hopefully it goes faster since it should be a repeat of the driver side drill....

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What should have went faster & easier took longer and was definitely more tedious. I wound up have to go backwards on the pass side to keep things consistent. Not sure how/where things got so different side to side when visually it appeared very equal (and each side was set-up w/the same strategy).

Regardless, I pushed through. It's ready to come back out for final welding....

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Nice work!

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I was waiting on a few parts ordered but for now, the exhaust is done (3/4's of it). What's in place is now fully welded. Everything lined up pretty well & went in w/o much fuss but 1pc will need to be re-worked because of heat/warping. I could make it all work but it would be in a bind so I prefer re-working the piece (increase the length of the H-pipe).

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With the front portions of the exhaust wrapped up, I needed to finish one last item on the rear suspension. I built my own Panhard bar frame mount & knew early on that I needed to make it a little more robust. I left things alone until other items were in place & I could determine my options. I opted to triangulate the mounting bracket to the opposite side frame structure vs adding to the frame mount. I took measurements & was looking up parts on the net when I decided to "recycle' yet another piece from previous builds & make it useful again....

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I like that triangulation!

I need to do the same thing to mine...

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Had to take some time to clean up the shop so things could be shuffled around. After the dust settled, I got the 64 moved over to the 'fab' side of the shop & got it lined up to prep for the sheet metal swap.

Sunday yielded progress....

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Then on Tuesday, my buddy Matt came over after work to lend a much needed extra set of hands....

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Then, last night I got after it again so I could see what I was up against & prep accordingly.....

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a while back i seen a chassis swap for a ford truck on hot rod garage
they changed the frame with one from a Ford Crown Victoria cop car
wonder if theres a chevy version of that swap too
a had seen someone who gotten a older style corvette frame to fit under a truck like that

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The Crown Vic front x-member swap is common for Ford trucks. Add a 4-bar set-up from FatMan Fab & your done. These already had a decent starting platform & are easily updated w/later year (thru 87) parts plus the T/A set-up offers great all around performance. Not sure why one would go through all the fab work of swapping a frame from something unless it was a fairly easy swap.

I believe a board member did swap a C5 vette chassis & modified accordingly. There's a build thread on it....
http://67-72chevytrucks.com/vboard/s...d.php?t=655105

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Cool build. For some reason I never saw your build threads before despite reading many of your posts on the boards. You should link your builds in your sig! I wish I would have seen this before I did my rear frame Z. I might have done a few things slightly differently.

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the reason hot rod garage did it was because the front and rear suspension from a crown vic was a lot better than the original 60s suspension . it had rack and pinion steering , it had the gearbox (forgot if it was a gearbox or automatic on the show) with the overdrive gear in it and the engine was stronger / better / more fuelefficient too

i seen modern engineswaps fairly often and most of the time they start with a donor car as they need a lot of the smaller parts to get it to work , i just figured it be a good idea to replace frame with the suspension too

the guy that did the corvette frame swap was looking intoo better handling and had a wrecked corvette and a chevy cab bed and nose laying around
seen pictures of it years back , he told me he brought it in once to have it serviced
the guy asked him wat happened to the frame as it was shaped so weird for a truck he just said he repaired a fenderbender

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They do that to older Ford trucks because the Ford front suspension was CRAP! They used a twin i-beam design. The Crown Vic swap changes it from the twin i-beam to a control arm setup very much like the GM trucks had from the factory. So the Ford guys do that swap to get to the same point the GM trucks had when new (with obvious exception of the rack).

You can also buy kits that allow you to install a rack and pinion steering to the old GM trucks. No need for a full swap to do that.

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Progress looks good Scoti. Don't forget I would be interested in that extra LWB frame if you don't need or want it...

Looks like you could make it to C10's in the Park if you keep making progress like this...

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Bumping this one back up. Took some time off from this thing while researching plans/options. Measurements indicate my factory 12-bolt will be too wide w/my current wheel set-up & the narrower 9" I have will be too narrow. Been investigating possible wheel choices to allow using the 9". I know exactly what I want but it's hard to pull the trigger when that money can be used toward the big picture (never know when I'm going to come across that future gearhead optioned home within my budget so I have to always be ready).

So, I turned my focus to other items. I have everything set-up for bags on this thing but really have been leaning toward changing to coil-overs. Since my rear shock set-up utilizes the G-body (Monte Carlo SS) shock arrangement, that was pretty easy to solve. The front set-up is an early version of PB's Dropmember. I spoke w/PB & they don't make an upper C/O mount for my 'older' version. Of course I could update to a newer unit that is C/O ready but I'm not spending the $$ over again. I built the rear suspension set-up so I'm pretty sure I can fab a new C/O friendly upper mount for my older Dropmember. I need to reach out to Ride Tech about shock lengths/spring rates that will work for my set-up & use that info as I design the mounts so I can optimize the shock travel (I want the longest travel possible).

Beyond that, I finished up the cab floor mods. With the cab now on the new chassis I could verify clearances. Everything cleared as hoped but the bellhousing was too close for my comfort level. The 2pc high hump cover allowed minimal gap @ the bell housing on the 700r4 (I couldn't slide my finger-tip through). I decided make the 2pc set-up a 1pc unit & remove the flange area where the clearance was the tightest. Then I needed to finish out the area cut out for the T/A x-member hoop extension (I'm running a 1pc drive shaft so clearance was necessary). I decided to flange the sheet metal cover & bolt it in like the 'high-hump' bellhousing cover vs welding it to the floor.....

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Now I need to rearrange things & get rid of some stuff in the shop (2nd SWB bed + 2 extra white tailgates for my 99). I need to make room for pulling the cab back off & welding up the notched cab support underneath.

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maibe mount the 9 inch with a set of spacers for now and have the 12 bolt shortened

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Everything looks good!
Glad to see you back on this cool truck.

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Nice

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Looking forward to seeing this one!!!

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X2!:metal:

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Finally! Glad to see you back on this one. I might know someone that could use that extra bed and the extra LWB frame if you still have it too...

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OE SWB truck......
No extra bed. SWB frame.

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Even better for the frame...LMK

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Blowing the dust off....

No progress on the decision about swapping to C/O's. I mulled it over but haven't decided so I moved to other things on the list.

I was going to get Precision Rubber to do the rebuilds on my vent windows a while back but they stopped offering the service. Then, they started up again. By the time they did this, my $$ was allocated elsewhere. I'll just do them in-house over the holidays @ this point.

Lately, my time has been spent focusing on the bed layout so I can finish the SS exhaust & bed floor. Since my drop method was done via 'backyard-engineering', it took some thinking to figure out the floor & bed mounting. The dimensions for relocating the mounting points were easy. It was the mounting methods (bed structure as a whole assembly & bed floor/tubs) that took some thought.

My rear wheels will be @ least 10" wide so I require stretched tubs for clearance (the current old-school set-up is ~13" wide w/no weight on the wheel/tire). Add in the fact that the bedside 'crease' (the bold, recessed bodyline on these trucks) is the top of the tire height @ ride height so the tires/wheels need to be tucked w/o being excessive & still clear during travel. My OE tubs are fairly beat up so I looked on C-list for alternatives & then to the WWW for re-pops.

Like my Dually, I decided there needed to be some sort of compromise as this truck was not planned to ever be anything more than a cool driver. I adjusted my plans to keep things simpler & have moved forward. I bought aftermarket widened tubs & will roll w/them. I also purchased wood locally since I need to tweak the layout for my needs there as well.

The vent assembly's staged for some finish prep, epoxy, satin black color & the stretched aftermarket tubs......

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The floor cross-sills have been mocked-up to define clearances of frame & exhaust. All as planned there. Since I was originally planning on a steel floor (remember... this project is full of recycled parts from other projects), I had to change a couple things because of the wood floor. After thinking through the adjustments, I'm moving along.

My plan is a modified version of an OE 'look'. I'm doing a GMC look for the inside of the bed vs. how Chevy did them. It keeps the floor & tubs easier & relatively worry-free vs. higher end choices. This is how Chevy did them:

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And...... GMC: