[BlueJeep]

Originally Posted by panelrodder81

Three questions, one is did you absolutely have to move the motor back? I ask because I'm a tall guy and my other truck is a panel truck so just moved my seats back for my height. If you don't HAVE to move the motor back I was hoping to extend my firewall forward to fill the space and gain some inches of interior space.

Is it absolutely necessary....maybe not....but you would have to do some butchering (ie. re-engineering) under the hood. Your radiator would have to move forward and the fan would have to be on the front side of that. I tried to show this with my earlier pictures. My buddy JR who is 6'9" is comfortable in this truck with the 88 seat. I think that would be far easier than extreme firewall mods. Having said that, the s10 firewall was 6" farther forward than the 49 one with it's cab-forward design.

Second question, during reassembly did you simply just hook everything back up from the S10 (minus the stuff you deleted) and run it?

Yes, basically. There was a huge loop of wires under the s10 dash that went from the driver's side over to the passenger side and then back to the driver's side that I cut about 4 feet out of too to clean things up.

Third, are you using the big fenders that were original to the truck? The look to have the smaller wheel openings that the one on my 1ton.

The fenders are original. From all my research, they didn't get the "big bolt" front clips until 1 1/2 tons. This one being a 3800 had the small front clip and a 9 foot bed.

One suggestion is, if your S10 is new enough to have OBD2 port you could keep the classic gauge look by using a cheep android based cellphone and install a program called Torque and then get a bluetooth obd2 adapter. This will let you setup a digital dash board that you can put in place and then remove at will. This is the direction I am planning to go when I start my swap.

Nope, this one's a bastard. It's like OBD 1.5 or something...it has the OBD2 plug but it's not OBD2. It's a 1995 with the TBI 4.3 and 4L60e. The New Vintage gauges get me a classic-enough look, however I may have to get a smart phone for a radio so I can stream Pandora in it some day!

And thanks for the inspiration!

Not a problem!

-Panelrodder

-Chris