The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area The HiPo Shop Ranger front end in my '36

As you can see from the pic of my truck I have a big bolt. I want to turn it into a pick-up and I thought briefly about an S-truck chassis. Then someone mentioned keeping the frame and getting rid of the big drive train etc and putting something new in its place. Here's my thought. the frame is virtually 2 straight rails at 36" outside to outside wide. The front suspension from a F#@d ranger or Explorer is riveted to its frame of roughly the same dimensions.
Here's my question. WHat are the problems that anyone can see with dropping this front end (with a few shims etc for ride height) under my frame and bolting it in?

Exessive camber wear, poor handling, and lowering expenive due to requiring 2 axle halves. I'd check the track width and perhaps consider a crossmemeber froma '73-'87 C10 with a true independant front suspension. Also has better aftermarket support.

Ok. The Camber would be a result of what exactly. Too heavy a chassis on a light suspension? Or maybe something else? THe C10 cross member would have much too wide a track I think. Is this where the Mustang front end comes in?
Bob

Because Ford parts should not be used on Chevy Trucks.

Bob, I would consider something like Bill mentions. If you want to beef it up, gusset the stock upper an lower a-arms as I do not know of a source for tubular control arms like those I am using on my GM Metric / S-10 based IFS kit I am building.

Scott

The camber issue is just an inherent design flaw of the Twin I beam suspension. The way that they work causes the wheel to travel in an arc, instead of smoothly up and down, like a Short Long Arm suspension used in the S10 and the C10 GMs. This is agrivated with the use of wide tires. Thsi causes the tires to wear exsessively on the outer edges. They also have tendacy to tuck the wheels under in hard cornering situations.

So this would be where the Mustang type front end comes in? The solid crossmember attaching directly to the frame? The Ranger that I looked at didn't have twin I-beams. I thought that those were on the full size F#@D pick-ups. Is there a way to remove the S10 frontend without the frame so that it would just weld up to my frame?

What year Ranger was it? If it was the later one with the SLA suspension, the upper control arm mounts are welded to the frame. The Ranger used a smaller version of the TIB up to the '97 model year.
On the S truck, based on the GM Metric intermediats, the suspension is pretty well integrated into the frame. One could cut out the section of the frame that the suspension mounts to, then alter as needed to fit. Using one the Mustang 2 based crossmembers might be a beter solution, there's also some out there that use the Camaro/Nova based suspension geometry.

THanks for the help. I guess if there was a better front end option out there, someone would have found it by now especially someone here at Stovebolt.