Texas Girl
I am new here also. I have been reading the threads but I have never taken the time to post until now.
My brother and I converted a 1966 suburban from 2WD to 4WD a few years back. At the time we did not have a welder but made up for it in ambition. What we did was take all the brackets and suspension off a 73-87 chevy truck and bolted them on the frame of the 66. First we removed the rear suspension and got the rearend of the burb up as high as we could with his tow truck. We left the springs and all the brackets on the axle and rolled it under the truck. Once we were happy with how it was centered, we clamped it in place and drilled and bolted it in. We then went to the front and removed the suspension and did the same thing. After that we pull off the front clip and removed the motor/trans and the cross members. We then placed and clamped the engine and trans cross members from the doner truck. Then put the motor/trans/trasfercase in to make sure everything ligned up and there was enough room for the distributor cap by the fire wall. And ofcourse we drilled and bolted the mounts in place. Last but not least we installed an adapter plate and put in the steering box. This all took us one weekend and a case of mountian dew. Remeber though that we both measured everything indepentantly so that we had a good double check on all our measurements. We also made cardboard templates of the holes for the suspension, with a center line mark so we could get an idea of where things would go.
The reason we did it this way was it seemed to be easier than trying to adapt another frame to the suburban, ie: radiator, bumper mounts, body mounts and so on. I hope this will help in your goal. Its a lot of work but I think the end product is worth it.
