I've posted bits and pieces of my swap here and there, but I'll put it all together here in one place now. Over the past 6-ish months, I've been working on swapping my 49 Chevy 1 ton onto an s10 frame.
It started out with a really clean (for Iowa) 1949 Chevy 3800 I bought from a farmer who had used it to haul produce to the farmer's market. It hadn't been run in about 5 or so years, and the block was said to be cracked in the original 216. The truck had a stake bed put on it when it was brand new and the tailgate removed....and stored. What I ended up with was a near perfect 9 foot bed that is perfectly straight, and an absolutely perfect tailgate that had been stored in a barn for 60 years!!
Here's what I hauled home:
And here's the donor, a 1995 s10 that was purchased to donate a front clip, and after doing so has sat behind a barn for the last 5 years. 207,000 miles on the TBI 4.3, 4L60, and it ran great! This would provide the chassis, engine, transmission, and any other part I could salvage off it and use on the 49.