The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area General Truck Talk AD cab onto 1975 C-10 swap

While I normally like to keep ADs pretty well stock I find myself with a rather spent 1949 chassis/drivetrain and a 1975 with a spent cab.

Seems like it might make a good merger, easier to drive, nicer ride while still retaining the older look.

Do any of you have links to such projects or thoughts on such a project? Know of any that have been done and any problems encountered?

I took some very rough measurements tonight and the two truck are similar in cab positioning and size of chassis.

Thanks in advance. Will check in tomorrow.

When you say drivetrain are you talking front and rear axles included? There quit a bit bigger on the 75. Then again I have no experience in this so...

Make sure section on the frame where the cab on the AD goes is of same or similar shape as the 75. I thought about putting a 65 on a 84 chassis but the 65 has a level frame under teh cab where as the 84 raises up under the seat. It was not going to look tight.

A couple weeks ago a met a fellow at a weekly local car meet. He had a '52 GMC 1-ton on a (I forget exactly what year) but I think it was an '80 LWB frame (that style at least). It was long and low. He had airbags all around and a 383 stroker under the hood. It looked very good (frame swap wise-body was a little rough). The wheels stuck out to far in the front, that was the first thing I noticed (as I told my brother it must be a frame swap), but it wasn't bad. He said he layed 2x4's across the entire frame lengthwise and placed the body on top and went from there. He ended up with an 8 inch riser on the rear cab mounts. Thats all I know about the truck.
Good Luck.

I saw what looked to be a 51 or 52 cab on what was possibly a late 70's or 80's frame. This was just yesterday in a local hopital parking lot. Something wasn't quite right, the left side front wheel and tire appeared to be under the fender about the way it should have been, but the passenger side stuck out about 3 or 4 inches.

The aluminum flatbed was held up by what appeared to be pieces of pipe about 7 or 8 inches long and no support in the middle, so the bed was swayed down. It had duel stacks and a beer keg tank. Also had miss matched aftermarket wheels.

It looked nice at 50 ft but, up close was a study in how not to do it. I was really excited at first, cause I thought, man that's cool, but I went away very dissapointed. I'm sure if it is done right and measured out correctly, possibly using deep offset wheels it would look good and drive good.

This was a 2wd, I've seen some done up on 4x4 frames in the past and they looked real nice.

Your '75 suspension is really too wide to look right under an AD. You can try wheels with lots of negative offset, but you are going to find the fronts stick out a ways.

That said, why not just widen the fenders all the way around? I've seen where someone cut the fenders lengthwise and grafted one or two inches in and welded it back together.

Another approach would be to take two complete sets of fenders, and again cut each fender lengthwise, but being careful to offset the cuts so when you combined the inside portion of one fender with the outside of another you have increased the width by the desired amount.

It probably sounds crazy, but I'm considering that exact approach to widen fenders on one of mine. Its also a way to get use out of fenders with a bad lip or small dent that could be eliminated.

Hm, for some reason my last post didn't stick around.

I hadn't really considered a wider front tread on the later truck. Time for 6:00 X 16 inch tires for narrowing it a little? Expect the narrower tire might also provide a little better fuel economy because of less roling resistance than a wider tire.

I can readily get some fenders to make wider ones if I should choose that direction.

I'll take lots of measurements this weekend and see if I think proceeding would be workable.

Thanks for all of the thoughts and replies.