You really need to pick a direction you are taking and stick to it. You started out wanting to keep it “mostly” stock, then went to some safety upgrades and now to a full blown street rod V8 and special chassis. We would really like to help you out and really are trying but we don’t know where you’re headed.
If you’re going the streetrod route we have a special forum (HiPo) for that and by using that forum almost exclusively for your questions you will get less pushback for hacking up your stock truck. We have several folks on here that have made a very good living for many years cranking out show worthy cars/trucks from their shops. They love to help.
