49 3600, s10 swap, project boogie

[joedoh]

against my wife's direction and better judgement I have started a new project.

“Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”
― Winston Churchill

so at least I am enthusiastic! My wife sees another rusty shatbox holding down the concrete in our driveway, as if it would float away if that space was left unweighted.

I actually started this last year as I thought I was winding down my 65 s10 swap, not your typical s10 swap, kept the s10 firewall floors and drivetrain, a 2.2L 5 speed. Drove it a few times between friends promises, and everyone who said it was a waste of time was wrong, it accelerated like a normal truck and got decent mileage on the highway, in the 20s.


Anyway, thats gone, and in March of last year I picked up a 1999 S10 longbed 4.3 auto SLS (tilt and cruise!) with a wandery front end and 4 bald tires, two of which held air!
had the stock wheels off the 98 so popped em on

and rebuilt the terribly unsafe front end (upper control arm bushings were faint memories, explains the st bernard head shake under braking) with all brand new suspension and steering parts even upgraded to blazer sealed bearing spindles and dual piston caliper brakes while I was in there



now it drives stops and turns like a new truck. Used it a year looking for the right 48-52 Ford or 47-55 Chevy.

Found one saturday a 49 (very important for titling) 3600 flat bed, came with 8 boxes of original spares, but sadly no bed and no glass. Spiders and bullet holes included free though. I made a low offer because it had a 65 tag on it, and to my surprise he said "have at it!".




the front springs were broken at the rear shackles so I opted for the adult option instead of the 20 yr old lets-crawl-around-in-dirt-and-push-this-on-a-borrowed-trailer-for-6-hours.


now its home, I have to clean it out and get a couple tetanus boosters



got a couple of these, plus the one in the cab,

a couple diverter valves in the boxes, newish OEM bumpers, a refinished oem painted grille, and just loads of extra stuff, gauges, weatherstripping, etc.

scored a set of patina matching running boards today too, no more shortys.


I've been killing myself at work, I am an engineer, and there has been a lot of churn the last year. I plan to take a vacation in the next 60 days and will keep looking for a bed and some glass, which is all I really need. New door glass is like 70 bucks from LMC, I have all the frames even though the glass is broken. hoepful that my daughter and I can hit this hard, a tremendous whack

I keep an over/under spreadsheet on these trucks, I have for a long time and a lot of trucks, helps to keep track of exactly what the project costs. So far I have 2800 invested, but that will decrease as I sell the 8 boxes of stuff and the body parts/interior of the longbed. I have some protouring billet 22" wheels from the 65 project that I will never sell for what I have to have for them, so they may end up on here too.