What does everyone think of body swaps?

I keep seeing these ‘creations’ on Facebook, dropping classic bodies on FWD or RWD more modern floor pans/ chassis. Some are widened and stretched to the point they don’t look right.. the ones that look okay, you can look at the wheels and Offset and know it’s not right. Thats my opinion. What is everyone else’s?

 

My opinion is you have a pretty good understanding of the situation.

 

I saw a 50 Ford 'shoe box' set on a 87-89 T-Bird sub-frame. The interior was all T-Bird...so was the drive train and wheels. I looked at it HARD...and couldn't tell until the owner clued me in.
Some/most are abortions.
Although...some of the fellas on here are setting old trucks on S-10 frames and they look REAL good !
(Me or Anthony would drive the crap out of 'em !!)

 

This is my Henry J it's on a 2 wheel drive s10 Blazer frame. I found out they are the same wheel base and same track width. I used the adapter mounts for the engine and headers for a s10. I did recess the fire wall and bigger trans hump. Just cut off the frame I didn't need and squared the body up and moved the s10 frame mounts to where I need them.

 

your Henry worked out real well!

 

Thanks

 

I'm with @alumslot on the Henry J and was going to post a club member that did the same thing but he beat me to it with his.



But please don't go sticking a 55-59 GM truck on one, they remind me of the ol soap box scooters where they mounted the box to a rollerskate

 

Frame swaps is a different category imo as most of those look decent and many look good. I’m talking about where they chop the dash, firewall and floor out of an old car and drop it onto a newer car that has had its body cut off.


Years ago when the ‘36 or ‘39 Ford was available in a fiberglass reproduction modified to set on a Ranger frame I almost bought one as I had a Ranger that woulda worked

 

I'm in the early stages of dropping a Willy's truck onto a GMT400 K1500 frame. Keeping the entire driveline except swapping in a carbed 383 or 400. Planning to stretch the cab and bed a bit to fit the GM wheelbase.

I have seen quite a few of them done like this, but very few that look right. Keeping a curve on the roof and carrying the door bodylines into the extension is key on this one.

As far as the swaps you are talking about, there are groups on the book of faces doing these with unibody donor cars. If the wheelbase and track width is close where you can get proper backspace on the wheels and make it look good I don't have a problem with them.

Late 60's chargers on crown vics is a fairly popular one I have seen.

 

Using the modern donor dash, floor, firewall etc. in a classic car has always looked terrible and seems like way more work involved than just hiding the modern donor stuff within the classic car.

As far as chassis swaps, I'm a fan if they are done right. When I say "done right", I mean the wheelbase and width works without distorting the profile of the vehicle. Shortened pickup beds to fit the donor chassis looks awful. Lengthened truck cabs never look quite right, no matter how well they are done. Then again, to each his own, my opinions don't really matter.

My '56 F-100 is on a '98-'11 Ranger 2WD chassis. I chose this donor chassis for several reasons... The wheelbase is spot on, coil spring A-arm IFS with disc brakes, rack & pinion steering, an Explorer 8.8" rear axle bolts in, plastic gas tank will never rust, internal fuel pump for cool fuel and quiet operation, partially boxed rails, easy to lower, front & rear sway bars, small Ford bolt pattern, any V8 will drop in easily, etc. The other reason is that I hate aftermarket suspension "kits" that use low quality bushings, hardware, and parts that you can't get at any parts store if you have an emergency on a road trip. I can find a loaded upper or lower control arm for a Ranger at almost any parts store. I drive my old cars, so I want simplicity mixed with reliability mixed with accessibility of replacement parts.

 

This one came out all right, but it might not be what you mean by "lengthened". If you just add several inches, it's pretty tricky to get it to look right!

 

That one's ok because it's pretty close to what an extended cab would look like if available at that time. Same with fake crew cabs. But when you have a single cab that's been stretched, it looks out of place and ruins the proportions and way more work to do than cutting and shortening the donor frame.

 

There's probably a way to stretch a cab to look good, but it would likely include lengthening the doors, which is a lot of work, so most guys don't do that.

 

I'm not a fan of the modern dash in those frame, floor, firewall swap cars.
Don't forget the common swap back in the day was 1949-51 Merc on a 1970-72 grand prix frame, floor, firewall

 

A common one that comes to mind is a crown vic chassis under a Ford pickup. Not my choice but sometimes economics dictates what happens. That's an economical way to update a truck. Frame swaps are entirely different. What's hidden is just that.

 

Actually for sure going to do a frame swap on a 49 Chevy truck. If I get a third 49-54 Chevy car I fully intend to use a lengthened g body frame and floorboard. It's a chassis I'm VERY familiar with and I want to do it low and able to rip a corner while still looking vintage. I refuse to use modern columns. And the dash swap for a modern one is just plain bizarre....and not in a cool way. If I ever do the g body chassis stuff like the seats will be made to look vintage. Not against modern parts on a vintage car but I see no advantage of fat newer columns. Like on my 53 bel air I have a modern stereo but it's hidden under the seat instead of cut into the dash.

 

I suppose it matters a bit on the condition the "original" car or truck was in. If the stuff was pretty nice, and mostly usable, the frame swaps are hard to justify. If the car or truck was a rust bucket, or missing a lot of stuff, the frame swap makes more sense. A few frame swaps. Some with before pictures, some without.

 

I remember seeing a magazine article about a Morris Minor — I think it was a Traveller — on a Citroën BX diesel floorpan. I remember the suspension spheres poking awkwardly though the front wings.

It seems to be a strategy when both the donor and the recipient are unibody cars. Unibody floorpan structures often assume there being something in the body to form an upper chord, and a lot of bodies designed to sit on separate frames don't have enough of that. Conversely there are cases where sticking a gratuitous ladder frame under a car does damage to the concept of the thing. I generally dislike builds which are all about the surface look and ignore or deny the underlying engineering concept (like Alice Cooper's Citroën DS). But some floorpan marriages are conceptually happier than others.

I agree that keeping a modern dash misses the point of an older body.

Also, remember the phantom Volga 2-door on a BMW floorpan someone built in Russia, which was doing the rounds on the internet some years ago? But iirc that was also let down by a BMW interior.

I have speculated about various air-cooled VWs on Golf Mk1 floorpans, as they share a 2400mm wheelbase — before the values of some ACVW models started going through the roof.

 

A lot of these full chassis swaps are abortions, but as this thread proves, there are also those people who can do it and make it come out extremely well!
I like the idea and it makes it much easier to work on later knowing exactly what year chassis you have so you can buy factory correct parts, and not be saddled with aftermarket parts that might be extremely expensive, or impossible to find later.

 

Here is the "holy grail" of chassis swaps ,the "Chevota Priuck" !

 

Not my "Holy Grail", but lots of effort has been applied.

 

The govt would legalize lynching if I tried that in New Zealand.

Cutting the roof off a unibody platform ,then grafting the rear half a ladder frame to what remains of the front half of the floor.

Even if I could pull a stunt like that off, I would at least use something in the rear like a trailer axle or FWD dead axle, instead if a truck rear end with the head removed

 

Almost all the unibody type swaps Ive seen are "just weld it where it touches and plate some of the bigger holes" type abortions. Not that it can't be done well (Retropower on Youtube do beautiful work), just that it almost never is.

 

In my opinion most of them look like toilets.
I don't like seeing a modern car dash in an old car that's my first pet peeve my second pet peeve is the wheels just as you mentioned.
Lastly I don't like how they normally stretch the car in the wrong areas usually in between the firewall and the wheel and sometimes in front of the front wheel usually it just looks really bizarre and it's pretty obvious something's not right

 

I did not know they actually had a kit, I know if you look at the Ford pickup from 35 to 41 and a Ford Ranger short bed single cab they are almost the exact same wheelbase and the Ranger axles are about the same width as the stock late 30 stuff, I've mentioned this before but I've always wanted to either do a full chassis swap or pull out the drivetrain and drop it in a 40ish pickup, They even weigh almost the same and because it would be pre smog (here in California that's a thing) It would be easy to put 8 or 10 PSI of turbo on it very similar to the Thunderbird turbo coupes and SVO fox body butt stains of the 1980s. I know it would not be an on topic vehicle but it would make a really nice daily driver, You can't go wrong with a ranger/pinto 2.3 or 2.5 and that little Mazda 5 speed that all the trucks came with from about 87 on is a wonderful shifting transmission. I may be a little biased here because I've owned a half a dozen rangers in my adult life but in my opinion it's one of the best driving small pick ups made. What makes a early Ford pickup the most awesome is the fact that you can get all the parts for it so if you need something like weatherstripping or a piece of glass a few phone calls away and you got it You mix that with the "late model" Ranger stuff and you would have just a great truck whether it's on the Ranger chassis or on the stock 1940 chassis... If you went with the stock chassis you can even get disc brakes in a dropped axle plus a dual reservoir master.

 

That's actually all aftermarket parts there's a YouTube video on it...
Apparently there is more than one I was going to send you the link to the one I saw a few years ago that went in detail but this is much easier to watch it's a minute long and It gets the point across...
Honestly it wouldn't be a bad gig if you had four or $5,000 for all the sheet metal you would need (I am only guessing on the price I'm not exactly in the market for a 1968 or 1969 charger I'm not really a muscle car kind of guy outside of maybe the funky AMC Marlin or That goofy AMC Matador I think it's a 1974 as both of those cars got personality but that's a different story). Anyways here is the video

 

I forget the name of the guys name or company name but if i recall it was a ‘39 Ford Standard and he built a cab and a bed where the cab and bed mounts matched the Ranger. I don’t remember if he did a hood and grill but I think so. Not a kit, just fiberglass parts as he built them as a one man shop type of thing. He passed away and his wife sold everything. I think he had unfinished orders as well. It’s probably been 10 years.

 

I suspect that you probably have no idea how many were done correctly, because if they were done right, you probably didn't even notice them. The "abortions" are the only swaps you looked at because they stood out.

Those are some pretty interesting comments concerning unibody swaps. I suspect you have little, or no experience with unibody vehicles.

I dirt track raced Mopar cars back in the 70s and 80s. Those were all unibody cars. More then a few times, crashes required splicing in a front clip. The big 65 -80 Chrysler's had a front boxed frame stub that the factory bolted to the unibody structure with 6 bolts. I used those to replaced the crashed front ends on several late 60s Chargers and Road Runners. "Weld where it touches" was the game plan, and it worked out pretty well, but you had to know how to do the welding at those attaching points. I had one guy really call me out on one once. I swapped in a full sized Chrysler frame onto a Duster for a new driver that didn't grasp the concept of dirt track racing. Over the next several weeks, I helped him replace all the front suspension on the right front corner of the car, every week. When he finally figured out why the other guys he was passing going into the corners were slowing down, he did much better. That "weld where is touches" frame swap survived 5 crashes into the cement wall without falling off, or even moving.

Don't think it was only Mopars that used bolt on front clips, all the Camaros and Novas had bolt on front clips, as did many 70s vans (all makes), and many Ford cars along the way. You probably don't want to know how many GM front subframes I have grafted into unibody or full framed cars.

Like everything else, there is a right way and wrong ways to do things.

 

And I'm absolutely certain that you have no idea what I might or might not know or think.

 

You are correct, I don't know you.
Your profile shows a lot of commentary on other peoples work, Photoshop experience, and some experience with VWs.