Two years ago (9/2019) I drove my panel truck for the last time, as it was, to the resto shop. A week later I drove the ’88 GMC there, the panel truck was being dismantled and they hit me with a healthy bill. One of the stipulations of the contract is that we meet once a week to go over progress, keep motivated, and settle up the bill. Each week I visited the shop, a little progress being made. They stripped both trucks down faster than I could have. The body was on a cart, and the two frames were side by side. Comparing body mounting points and deciding how to modify the donor frame. The ’47 gas filler is on the passenger side. 1988 the filler is on the driver side, tank is inside the frame rail. Pre ’88 the tanks were outside the frame and an auxilliary tank could be added to the passenger side. That doesn’t appear to be an option here, the ’88 auxiliary tank was behind the axle and I want the spare tire there. It could be done, re-route the exhaust to the driver side and find a tank with the passenger side filler. There is the driver side transfer case, so exhaust would go below that. I decided to go with moving the filler to the driver side on the panel. We used the brackets and frame ends from the ’47 frame. The original frame had extensions on the rear. We decided a frame bracket template would be a good way to locate the body mount brackets. With the Z-axis points determined, I want the body to ride at or near stock height, so the 2” wood blocks won’t be used. The 2” hat channel cross sills will be replaced with 1x2 tubing layed flat. This will put the bed as close as possible to the frame. All other mounting points are lowered about 3” relative to the bed mounts. Now all the brackets can be tacked in place, and the body will be test fit.
