My Project: 46 GMC on S10 Chassis with LSx Engine

[shaunatk]

I'm just going to copy and paste my posts from ls1tech.com.

Now that we have reached the point of figuring out how we're going to mount the LSx into my truck, I figured I'd start a build thread.

My father purchased this truck several years ago, and the body panels had been sitting in the corner of his shop that entire time. It was bought from a local farm, and the body overall is in terrific condition considering it's age. There needs to be some slight patching in the front corners of the cab, but other than that the rest of the cab is in excellent shape. The bed is in pretty good shape, I've purchased a new tailgate and a front panel, but the original bed sides and even the original steel bed floor (GMC's didn't have wood floors) is in good enough condition to be restored without too much work. The biggest issues with the body are going to be the fenders, because there is a lot of bondo on the passenger fender, and while I haven't looked at the rear fenders much yet, I think there's going to be a lot of work put into them.

The original chassis for the truck was non-existent, and so we planned on mounting the body on a 80's s-10 frame. A few years ago, a frame was purchased, disassembled, and sandblasted. When I purchased the truck from my father, I happened across a 2003 S-10 chassis that only had 40k miles on it, so I purchased it for $250 and am going to use it instead, because I don't have to disassemble it, and replace all of the components. I figured I'd save myself some time and lots of money by doing this.

We have averaged 3 weekends a month, beginning in April working on the truck. All of these weekends so far have been devoted to getting the cab and the front sheet metal mounted to the frame, while keeping the body panel alignment as close as possible. This is a lot easier said then done, because unlike the AD trucks (47+), the front end on my truck has what seems like 15 separate pieces of sheet metal.

Here we are in the early stages of figuring out how we're going to mount this to the frame:



Thank god for the car lift in my dad's shop. We just put the arms through the windows, and move around the frame underneath to get everything centered. Tons of time was spent ensuring that we could mount the cab and the front end as low as possible on the frame.




Fenders attached to the cab, and the fronts of them held up with bungee cords. During this time, we didn't even know how the truck assembled together, so lots of time was put into this.



Finally, the front end is put together, and everything is held up with bungee cords. Nothing aligns very well either.



One of my biggest concerns is making sure the wheels are positioned properly within the wheel well. I'm still nervous about it, but having looked at hundreds of photos, I think we've got it right. Plus, the fender is sort of misshaped, and the front will be pulled in slightly.



I had decided at one point to use a standard SBC, with a 700R4 transmission, so we fabricated mounts, and a new transmission cross member. But, I figured since we were using a modern chassis, why not use a modern fuel injected engine? So that was a wasted weekend.



Here you can see how tight the clearance is between the frame rails and the very back of the fenders. We might end up having to very slightly modify the backs of the fenders, but that'll be easier than modifying the frame rails.




We got really tired of taking the front end apart over and over again, so we came up with a solution to simplify things!