flatbed pics or plans?

[fluffyfreak]

I gottta 86 C10 longbed im toying around some ideas for. One is to swap in 1 ton dually suspension and turn it into a flatbed hotrod. Anyone have pics of a flatbed and or plans on building one?

[Bowedup]

I don't have any digital pictures to share but I did the same thing with my '79 C10 about 15yrs ago. As a 1/2 ton w/ 3.07 gears and a 305 it would not haul a trailer of any size with a load, so we swapped a small drum 3/4ton rear axle under it with 4.10's and a limited slip and put dually wheels on the rear, then took two 3/4ton leaf spring packs, disassembled them & combined the two stacks by size, then added a couple overloads above that & bolted them under for a beefy rear suspension. Up front we installed stock 1ton coil springs to bring the nose up level and I ordered a set of 5-lug 16in wheels from Summit so I could run 235/85/16's all the way around the truck. With this all done we put an 8ft flatbed on it with boxes and an air compressor & gin poles that would lay down even with the bed. We topped it off with a strong 350 with a cam designed for low rpm grunt.

With all of this done it was an excellent work truck & I ran it this way for over 10yrs until the rust on the cab became too bad & I galled 5cyl on the engine. The brakes were adequate but could definitely have been better, & it road like a 2ton truck empty. Loaded it was great, no trailer sway or squatting, had great power (would smoke all 4 back tires doing a burnout!), and was an excellent work truck. I hauled up to around 20k behind and over 4k on the bed and never had an issue. I still have the truck & hope to find another cab to swap onto it at some point and get it back on the road with a new engine.

Scott
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[Bowedup]

Found some pics! Pardon her looks, this truck was 100% work truck.





Scott
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[fluffyfreak]

Tough lookin truck man, if I go this route its definitely getting a 454 and 4l80e