'60-'62 had the front torsion bar suspension.
It rides very, very comfortably.
The problem is that the parts to rebuild it are very expensive. There's a guy on ebay (bestsuspension, I think) that has lower ball joints pretty cheap. That'll save a ton of money.
From the factory, the truck shouldn't be wearing tires. Either the front end is very worn out, or it's way out of alignment.
It's a crap shoot: you can either spend a lot of money rebuilding the stock front end (which is what I'm doing with my '62), or you can spend money buying a new cradle and swapping out a later suspension, which will also need to be rebuilt.
If you swap cradles, you'll get the new spindles and disc brakes, but it'll most likely be 5-lug, which means you'll have mis-matched wheels front and rear (stock rears are 6-lug).
You will have to rebuild the calipers, turn the rotors, replace the seals and brake lines, and also rebuild the front end. Lots of work, but very do-able.
You'll also either have to buy drop coils, or drop spindles. With the torsion bar front end, you just have to crank down the torsion bars at the alignment shop, and then align it. Did it on my Suburban, and worked really well.
More than disc brakes, you need to convert to a dual reservoir master cylinder. That's far more important for a 16-year-old. Discs aren't a bad idea though.
Also, convert the drums to self-adjust. Shafer's Classic parts carries an 11-inch self-adjust conversion kit that is very simple to install. I've found that's the biggest problem with drum brakes--they don't self-adjust, and most people aren't out there adjusting the drums every two weeks. Or even every oil change.
My '62 is getting a rebuilt front end, self-adjust rear drums, and a power disc conversion kit.
Brad
