The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area General Truck Talk Art Deco body on AD frame?

I have a restored 54 frame and high pressure 235 but really want a Art Deco truck with a little more modern engine and suspension. How hard is it to mate the two? Is this a reasonable thing to do?
It looked like the dimensions were close but didn't know about other potential problems. Anyone else do this?

Thanks in advance.

John

Hi John and welcome to Stovebolt.

IMO, When you get right down to it, there's really not that much different between the Art Deco suspension and the Advance Design suspension to make it worth the trouble of putting Art Deco sheet metal on the AD frame -- you'd be putting a lot of effort, time and money into it and getting marginal/no improvements.

We have a lot of 'Bolters who have made some impressive rides out of Art Deco trucks -- TrknGMC comes to mind. You might talk to him and the others about just getting an Art Deco truck and making a few mods to it to do what you want to do. It would probably be simpler. Keep the engine, though

What a lot of folks do (me included) is once you get the truck you want, just get it driveable. Just enjoy it for starters and get to know it. THEN start doing incremental improvements. All of these trucks seem to have a good starting point for reasonable drive ability upgrades -- even with a straight axle.

Just a thought, anyway.

John

Thanks, it's always better to hear it from someone who knows. Seemed like a good idea but you never know about the unknowns and oops until after you are deep into it.
Thanks for your advice.

John

Love those Art Deco bodies but that narrowing frame in front makes for a tough transplant job. A friend dropped a '35 school bus body onto an NPR rolling chassis, but it took some seriously serious mods to pull it off. Had to add a LOT to the fenders.

That said...his is up and running. I've been working on making my '46 road worthy for nearly 6 years and I'm still at it!

The '54 frame is very different in the back half than the 47-53 due to the change in bed design. This would add more challenges to that transplant.