The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area General Truck Talk Are GMC frames thicker? (Art Deco)

I read somewhere on the oldgmctrucks.com site that GMC frames are thicker than Chevy frames of the same year. I just bought a 42 GMC rolling frame. I measured it next to the middle crossmember and it's .148" thick. Does anyone care to measure there Art Deco frame thickness in the same area?

I imagine you could measure ten of them and come up with a range of numbers on thickness. It wasn't an exact science when building these machines back in the day.

As far as GMC parts being slightly heavier duty, many parts were, but with two identical parts, one Chevy, one GMC, I doubt there was enough difference to warrant different tooling for both 'makes'.

Jeff

Did you compensate for rust and paint? Seriously though, these being stamped members, some variation across the whole unit should be expected. I've heard that the springs were heavier, but probably on the heavy trucks .148 is somewhere between 10 and 9 gauge, consistent with the 9/64 specified in the engineering manuals and also my 37 frame. (Engineers using fractions rather than decimals? What nonsense!)

some years ago i stored a friends 53-6400 oren firetruck in my shop next to my 51-350 firetruck. looking at them on the surface they basicaly look the same with the only difference being in the grille and hood configuration. i started to look underneath and it was there i saw the differences. everything is heavier on the gmc than on the chevy from axle to axle.