Grigg: you bring up an important point regarding "value". I was trending toward thoughts that shrinking that 2 Ton would make it more valuable to me, this allowing me to pour a little more money and time into it. I think that the cab and front clip can be restored/refreshed/preserved for a similar price to a smaller 1/2-3/4ton etc because those smaller trucks include such a nice detailed bed (that can cost a pretty penny to get looking straight and shiny)
As it sits, it was past tense good for hauling grain from the fields about a decade ago, and I did use it to haul wood and big metal locally. But the shear size of the truck doesn't lend itself to easy parking, or easy driving in city, nor finding a shelter to keep it from the elements. It's like trying to keep an elephant as a pet.
I have the truck in our old circa 1953 machine shop building that was used to build drag racing cars. The machine tools are long gone, but the building does have a thick concrete floor and an I-beam overhead trolley. The city has grown up around the building and there is a 4X4 specialty builder shop next door, and few garages close by. I am getting a bit too fragile to do such massive work as cutting the frame, but I will talk to a few of the younger mechanics in those shops to see "if" they could cut and weld the frame to a detailed spec. in either in my old building ,or in their nearby shops.
Besides reducing the cost to spiffy up the looks, I was thinking that removing the bed and reducing the overall length would make the truck easier to haul (as a work in progress) from place-to-place on a shorter trailer and with less of a needed tow truck. {last time I moved the truck was with a big dually).
GreggE: yes, I would like to see the way you shortened that bed & frame and pics would be super.
coilover: It is amazing to watch such big trucks zip around like golf carts ! I have an old color brochure book of Fruehauf Trailers and Special Equipment from the AD Stovebolt period and its so neat to see all the aftermarket stuff that they could put on such relatively low horsepower big trucks. I can just imagine what what a Detroit Diesel powering a stubby truck could do.
