The Stovebolt Site Forums The Parking Lot '60-'66 Trucks Frame and/or transmission swap?

Hello all-
after an extended absence, I have come to the conclusion that I can't part with my stovebolt (1963 C10 250 6/ 3 speed shortbed stepside) for love or money (especially since I haven't seen any for it), so I am thinking of building it.

My questions-

1. Been looking into swapping one of the various 73-87 crossmembers onto my frame to give me disc brakes, better ride, stronger frame, etc. Thought it would be just as cheap to buy someone's old truck and then junk what I don't need. I also could get the metal bed floor and weld it in in place of my completely- rotted wood bed floor. I was looking around craigslist, and found a 1989 reg cab SWB, minus engine and tranny. I was wondering, could I just move my old body onto that frame, with minimal mounting modification? What is the wheelbase of each vehicle like (I can't find a measurement online for the 1989 SWB). It would give me discs, a limited-slip rear, and all 5-lugs (instead of 5 lug front from a newer truck and stock 6 lug rear), already run brake lines, no suspension geometry to fool with,etc? Help, ideas, and the collective voices of experience here would be appreciated.

2. I want to keep the 6 cly, but the 3-on-the-tree non-overdrive is killing me. I was looking into doing the t-5 swap from a 4.3 s10. Found a t-5 on craiglsist for $50.00, but it's electric speedo (will have to modify a stock floor shifter to make it look quasi-factory). I can live without having the speedo hooked up ( I could install a tach and calculate it that way), but I was wondering, if I swap frames, will this transmission behind a inline 250 be enough to pull the truck? Not looking to go to the strip with it, but I was thinking of a 2 carb manifold and split headers....

Thanks guys; ya'll are the best bunch of gearheads I have run across in a long time.

Alex

There is an earlier thread titled "put the 65 c 10 body on something more modern" that may have some information for you about the frame.
As far as the transmission question, are you referring to the strength of the trans or whether or not it has desirable gear ratios for your application?

Thanks for the link to the thread; as someone who as of yet does not know how to weld, I guess learning and tackling this as a first project might be too hard. Did find out that the 1989 frame is only 1.5 inches longer than the stock 1963... still would be more work than swapping crossmembers, assuming I can cipher through all the info to figgure out what I need to use where.

As far as the transmission, I know the t-5 will hold up decently behind my 250 in a half-ton for moderate use. I read on a tech page here that the 5-speed from the 6 cyl s10 with the 4.03 first gear (code ML2?) is a decent tranny that is low enough but still is good to cruize at 60-65 mph. Any imput there?

I would agree that a frame swap without plenty of welding experience could be too hard, but there are other options. If you swapped out the crossmember you could convert to the 5 speed you want. I'm not sure what all you can do to convert to disc brakes, there may be kits available. I do know you can convert to power steering/brakes by using early to mid 70's parts with only slight modifications.

For the trans, 4.03:1 first gear should work just fine. As far as cruising goes, that depends what your 5th gear ratio is, as well as what gears you have in your rear end and what size rear tires you have. But as long as your final gear drive on both transmissions is close it should be fine. Does the 3 speed you have now have overdrive?

Disk brakes are an easy swap. You don't even have to swap the whole crossmember. You'll need the '73-'87 front spidles, along with the calipers and rotors, the upper and lower balljoints as well as the outer tie rod ends for the same year range trucks. Simply swap the balljoints and tie rods, then install the later spindles and brake parts. You'll also need a dual circuit master cylinder, the later style master cylinder and booster will bolt up in the stock location. For the rear, that could get a little tricky. There's 2 ways to do it; have the axle shafts redrilled for 5 lug and replace the drums with ones with the correct pattern; or swap the alxe shafts and drums to ones from a '71-'76 12 bolt, that will require shortening the shafts by about 1/2" each and regrooving them, as well as chaning out the differential side gears to the later 30 spline. Another option would be to swap te entire rear axle for a later assembl, after the proper mounting parts have been attached.

I was interested in doing the whole crossmember swap for a few reasons:
1. If I do go and pull the whole crossmember, I can rebuild it prior to instillation and have it all set up before I have to even touch my truck.
2. Having the whole crossmember of just 1 vehicle would make replacement and finding parts numbers that much easier, instead of having to hunt for disc brakes from one year and power steering components from another, etc. Also, having the whole crossmember from the later vehicle, I have read, is supposed to be stronger than the earlier OEM stuff.

'66father/son-
I have a 3 speed non-O.D., which I believe has a 1:1 final (3rd) gear. This could be totally incorrect, though. My rear-end, I have read, is most likely a 3.73 (all i know for sure is it's a 10 bolt, non- posi, and leaks at the gasket). I have some tall rear tires on what could be stock rims? BTW, how do you know what a split rim looks like, or did my truck even have those stock?

LONGBOX55-
Thanks for the info, that's very helpful too. If I do anything to the rear, I feel like it would be much cheaper in the long run to find a junkyard axle with appropriate gears and a limited-slip that's a 5 lug. I know 12 bolts are getting harder to find, but there has to be something that meets my criterion that is roughly the correct size that can be modified to accept coil spring perches. (This was something else that would be nice about swapping frames, but it sounds like it might be over my head...)

Thanks again for all the help and info.

I'm fairly new to this stuff but from what I can find the T5 should have a less than 1:1 final gear ratio so you will be running at a lower rpm than with your 3 speed, so it would be better for cruising, as long as your rpm's don't drop so low it starts to "dog out". If you jack the rear of the truck up you can confirm if the gears you have are 3.73's pretty easily by marking the tire and rear end yoke with chalk and spinning the tire one revolution and counting the revolutions of the yoke. When you know your tire size and trans/rear end gears, there are several rpm calculators (just google it) that will give you an idea of how fast your motor will be spinning. But keep in mind they don't account for vehicle weight, load, air resistance, etc.
As for the split rims, I have never had to deal with them.. but this might help. split rims

Your rims will be the standard single peice rims. The splits were on the 8 lug 3/4 and 1 tons, and even then, not all of those have them. The main concern that you'll run into is with running modern tires, since the OE rims are a bit on the narrow side. The nice thing, or at least with the 6 lug wheels, it that 4x4 wheels up to '87 fit fine, and wider wheels are redily available. If you go to 5 lug, with either a spindle or crossmember swap, that wil get you a 5x5 bolt pattern, which opens up even more choices. Chevy trucks used that pattern on 1/2 ton 2wds up to '98, and the backspace and offset didn't change like the 4x4 did in '88. Even some Impala and Caprice wheels run that pattern. However, the '94-'96 Impala SS wheels won't work on a truck, we tried it.

I would like to swap to the modern 5 lugs all around because the wheel/tire options are much more diverse, just as stated.

saw a 77 c10 frame online for $50 about an hour north of me... tempted to get it for the corssmember and see what the rearend is.