Current Plan -- September 29, 2002

September 29, 2002

Rethinking a little... Yesterday I looked at at '75 Chevrolet three-quarter ton van. This is a light three-quarter that has the five-lug wheels. I don't know what Chevrolet was thinking when they made this thing, but I've noticed a lot of three-quarter ton vans with five-lug wheels. They don't have a floating type rear end, but do have a generous load and towing capacity.

I've looked at adapting the front crossmember from a pickup of the same vintage to the sub, and that looks like a reasonable project. The rear from this van would also be a good choice for the sub.

So, we do a frame-off on the '54 pickup, adapting the van suspension, engine and transmission. The result is a sub friendly modern suspended frame ready to pull a trailer. Next, pull the sub's body off the current frame, and drop that on the updated pickup frame.

Then IFS subframe, or perhaps Mustang II IFS, the sub's frame before dropping the pickup body onto it.

The sub ends up being a real truck, but with modern suspension, brakes and steering, and the pickup becomes a decent driver. I think this isn't a bad approach.

Meanwhile, I just sold the Saginaw 4-speed overdrive for enough to order disk brakes parts from ChevyDuty. So I may be thinking about building a new frame for the sub, but today I plan to order parts to put the disk brakes on it. The frame swap will be a lot of work....

Last updated: December 31, 2006