Hi Billy,
It's going to be tough to make an antique truck blow a muscle car out of the water in a drag race. Muscle cars were built specifically for the drag strip, and then had bumpers installed to make them street legal.
Switching the rear suspension to a four-link or trailing arm type suspension would go a LONG way toward helping you hook up, as would changing the center of gravity toward the rear. Since the weight on the front half of the vehicle isn't normally going to move, the easy way of doing this is to add weight.
Making your vehicle lighter does make it easier to accelerate, but if you don't have traction, you won't accelerate either, so really you need to have the right weight in the right places, then build more horsepower into the vehicle to overcome the weight.
Another way to change the center of gravity is to raise the front of the vehicle, AKA gasser. By raising the center of gravity in the front, more weight is transferred to the rear under acceleration, but it doesn't actually change the mass of the vehicle. Another benefit of making a gasser out of it is that *****in' nostalgia look. That was the craze back in the 50's, so those guys on HAMB would probably give you mad kudos for doing it. It's also a pretty simple operation, since your truck already has a solid front axle, and all you would need to do is flip the axle over (since it's currently a drop axle), giving you probably 4" - 6" of lift.
