Thinking of getting another 60-66 C-10 pick up. I do not like the stock 6 lug. Any tips or suggestions? I heard 54 chev drums fit right on. Is this true? What rear end is the best to use with the least amount of headache? Thanks in advance.
Look for rear axles/drums and front drums/rotors from a 72 pickup. Easy R&R. Or if you want better brakes, disc brakes and spindles from a 72 up to early 80's is an easy upgrade. Larry T
do you want car pattern (4.75") or truck pattern (5")? for the car stuff, the 52-54 car hubs/drums might fit on an early 60s truck, but not a mid 60s. They went from ball to roller bearing in the early 60s, the 50s car stuff is ball bearing. for a rearend, aside from the panhard bar issue the 70s Camaro type rear is probably as good as it gets. If you want the truck 5 lug pattern, then do as Larry suggested. 70-up truck rearends are wider than the earlier ones, we just discussed this not long ago, do some searching.....
I'm thinking the 49-54 car stuff only fits up to a '54 pickup spindle....not sure if it fits anything after that. -Don't think so.
it fits the 55-59 trucks too, i'd have to look up bearing numbers to see about the early 60s trucks, but they might be the same.
i dont know about the drum thing your asking, but i believe you can swap the whole front cradle out of a later model truck pretty easily and probably pretty cheaply. you may have to drill or elongate some holes. 71 to 86 you get disk brakes and not sure if power steering was an option or on all of em. its been on all the 71 and 72's ive had. all the halftons are 5 bolt. i think the rears may be a few inches wider though.
Not really looking to swap out an entire front end. Just looking at drum swap/ rear end swap. Not much else.
Not exacly sure what year they switched to 5 lugs, but early 70s chevys should be a direct bolt on. They have the same suspensions with the trailing arms in the rear, so the rear end will bolt right in.
71 was the first year of 5 lug. A front end swap is nothing to worry about. You can do one in 3 hours or so. The crossmember unbolts with 14 bolts. Buy a later model setup and bolt it into your truck. You can use trucks from 71-87 or Suburbans from 71-91.
I did the conversion on my 61 Apache 10 SWB etc. Here is how I did mine. - I used the conversion kit from McGaughey's - dont spend the money, the calipers are late model "metric - that don't release" so I had to swap them out for 72's. Good spindles though. - I went thru numerous late master cylinders and boosters and ended up with a manual MC for a 71-72 with disc brakes. - I got a proportioning valve for a 71-72 from Classic Industries - For the rear I had a local machinist plug and redrill the axle flanges for 5 lug and did the drums too since they were in decent shape. I checked chevytalk.org and 6066.com which were a great help. And the best thing to do is swap out the cross member like Hillbilly said. Just make sure everything is from the same model years. The other bonus is there is a hell of lot more suspension goodies for a 73 - 80 truck than for the early years.
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