Well, its been awhile since the last post, and a lot has happened. Not necessarily with the truck.
I got the frame cleaned up and painted and then did the swap in a weekend.
The body fit the frame like it should and everything lined up great. The only issue was that I dropped the engine during the sawp
After much trial an error, I determined that the crank was bent. There was a nasty vibration and it got worse when running around 50mph. That meant that the motor had to come out, put it on a stand and start the bottom end tear down. I got lucky and still had the balance sheet from the original crank and was able to get a new one balanced to the correct specs. After re-installing, it runs great.
But, it was getting to be winter time and I still had the trim to restore (strip, sand, sand, sand,....buff and paint). Didn't think it would be a good time to try and paint in cold weather, so I planned to put it off for a while.