The time has finally come for us to start work on the first done from scratch truck frame swap project. We already have one vehicle that is a truck frame swap but it was done prior to our acquisition of the vehicle. That is the 46 Ford, which is on an S10 frame. Our project is going to be done from the dead start. Right now we're starting off with the stripped down body of the car. Everything that could be removed has been removed, short of the front suspension/steering and the rear end/springs. I'll have to remove all this hardware in order to get the body fully ready for the installation on the truck frame. The plan afterward will be to use the engine crane, and possibly our neighbors tractor, to lift the body up high enough to set it on the boards which will be rested between a pair of oil drums, front and back. This will position the body high enough to allow us to roll the frame under the car, especially with the powertrain installed, so we can then work on placing the body onto the frame. The first thing I did was jack up the car at the front end and place my set of ramps under the front subframes. I removed the front tires and rested the car on the ramps completely, freeing all tension/pressure on the suspension. After getting the car staged, I started on the right side removing the spring shield that is bolted up at the top of the shock tower. I had to cut the top of the shock where it mounts as well since the bolts at the bottom were rusted in place. I removed the cap that was holding the top of the shock. Next, I removed the two nuts holding the upper control arm, which in turn holds the coil spring. After hammering the bolts out, I used a crowbar to push the top of the coil out enough to make the whole works pop free. I had to remove the four bolts holding the upper ball joint to the upper control arm. From there I removed the upper arm, coil and shock. The upper arm/shock went to scrap, and the coil was saved as its still useable. The shock cap was also saved. With the upper suspension hardware free, I started work removing the other hardware. I popped the lower ball joint free and disconnected the brake line along with the tie rod end. Doing that freed the spindle assembly and got it out of the way. I continued down the line, removing the support struts on the top of the engine bay, then went back low to remove the mounts for the sway bars, control arm struts, and idler arm. I also pulled the bolt free for the V8 bar, which supports the subframes on V8 cars so nothing buckles or warps under the weight. The lower control arm came out as well, freeing everything up on the right side, from there, on to the left side to do the same thing. Now with the spindle and control arms out I finished up with the removal of the sway bar and V8 bar, and started the removal of the power steering piston assembly. Since a lot of these bolts were rusted to hell, I had to do a lot of grinding to remove everything completely. I probably critically damaged a part of the PS system, but this mess would need to be rebuilt anyway, if that's even a viable option anymore. I wouldn't have a clue if rebuild parts are available for these systems. Along with fighting multiple wasps that were taking residence in the left frame rail, I managed to get the PS assembly completely removed, along with everything else, leaving just the steering gearbox. Looking at the gearbox, I found that this assembly is not like later assemblies where a coupling of some sort holds the end of the steering shaft to the gearbox, facilitating an easy removal. This setup, involved removing the steering wheel from the inside end of the steering shaft, then pulling the whole steering column housing (which was already free) from the shaft, which was an integral part of the gearbox. Once the steering column housing was pulled free, I was able to remove the gearbox completely. This goofy design of the steering on this car has it where I will probably have to do some serious improvisation to be able to reuse the stock steering column tube and steering wheel. I will probably end up cutting the shaft at the gearbox, which will probably render the gearbox garbage, and weld some form of coupling to the end of the shaft in order to couple it to the Ranger steering gearbox. Either way, everything is now free from the front of the car. Surprisingly, the front of the car is pretty light, almost light enough for me to lift it up on my own. Two lifters could probably lift this thing up enough to place it on the drums, but we're not going to strain to do that. We will use the engine crane for this work. Work smart, not hard, or stupid. With the front end done, we're off to a good start, the next order of business will be to get the rear end set up so I can remove the rear end assembly and leaf springs. Other hardware like the brake lines and parking brake cables will also have to come out, probably just get cut out since most of this stuff is trash anyway. The mounting points for the leaf springs will most likely get ground and cut out since most of the metal around these areas is rusted to hell so we're not really going to take a lot of time and care trying to remove this stuff from the body, most of the areas where the ends of the leaf springs are mounted will be patched or otherwise altered to facilitate mounting to the truck frame.
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