newbe look for some ideas

[mag-d]

New to sight, my father and I are starting back on his 50 chevy pickup after a 10 year break. Truck has a 4inch chop, suicide doors and tubbed in the rear all of which was completed before he halted on the project 10 years ago.
truck was a project when he got it and someone had grafted on a stock mustangII front and did a pretty bad job. He had left it for a later job at the point of stopping.
I'm wanting to put on a camaro sub, did one on my 58 a few years back and worked great. Finding out there is a big differance in the two trucks frames.
50 is narrower and tappers alot.
I know alot of people like the heidts front but it's a little pricey and I like the fact that if I use the camaro its pretty straight forward with headers,oil pans and other things related. We are installing a big block chevy as well.
Any of you guys got any tips for the camaro sub frame install? how did you like it when finished

[CAL 58 GMC]

Welcome to he board! Post some pictures of your project, I know we would all love to see it.

[Jebb1978]

Welcome to the board!

The Camaro subframe is not common in the AD series for all the reasons you have stated already. You may consitter a full frame swap to a late model S10,
that seems to be the most popular interchange.

I too would love to see some pics of that truck!

[mag-d]

If there is anybody that has done one of these style trucks with the camaro sub frame please post a pic, I would love to see if how I'm gonna do this is close to what others have done.

We did a bounch of measuring last night and came up with this Idea. The frame narrows rapidly but just under the fire wall its close to 32" outside rail to rail, which is about the same as the camaro from the center of each rail.

What I want to do is make a cut at the top and bottom of the origanal truck frame at that 32" width point and spread the rails about 7/8 of a inch which would make them run straight again and paralle to the camaro rails.
Then I can graft the two together and box all in.
I think this should work great. I'll take some pics of the progress.
I also think we will do some tube a-arms maybe some 1" a side narrower to gain some room and keep my track width the same front to back.

[Sweet&LowPro55]

My '55 has the Camaro sub-frame ,4 link rear ,but I bought it that way so I can't really help you.Its pretty awesome tho...

[krue]

Welcome to the board! Take lots of pics

[pgf545]

Mag, I did a Heidts on my dads truck a couple of months ago. If you already have the Mustang 2 stuff you can buy just the crossmember and redo the one you have. That would only cost you a couple hundred bucks and would be a whole lot less fab work. I saw one at a car show recently that a guy had done like that. He bought the crossmember from Heidts and bought a Mustang and stripped out the front end parts. Check out my build link and look at what we have done so far. We are putting in a big block so it might help you. Good luck and let me know if there is anything I can help you with. There are several people on here doing these trucks with big blocks so ask away. They have helped me lots.

Bernie

[bretcopsey]

mag-d, I'm in the middle of a 79 Camaro clip swap on my 51-it's not 'pretty' but I think it will get the job done. Check out this thread and let me know if you have any questions.

http://67-72chevytrucks.com/vboard/s...d.php?t=210104

[mag-d]

Does anybody have a wheel base length on these trucks. Since this truck had a poorly done mustang all I really can do is go off of what they had but I question that.

Got the camaro sub under the truck but not welded yet. We are now ready to split and widen the stock truck rails and blend into the camaro sub frame and then proceed with boxing in. I will try to get some pics tomorrow and get you all introduced to it. The toughest part for me will be to figure out how to get them down loaded on to this site. I'm much better at working on trucks then computers.
Question for brett.
Do you have anymore closeup pics of the mating of the two frames, just curious of the different aproaches people take to connect the two.
Any one else have pics of there camaro install.

[bretcopsey]

Unfortunately I don't think I have any pictures of the beginning stages of the process. I tried to draw it out on the attachment below. I basically cut off the truck frame at the firewall and cut off the top and bottom prtion that made the "C" turning it into an "l" when viewed straight on.

I then cut off the Camaro subframe right at about the point where it starts to kick down for the firewall. I cut out a pie shaped piece on the top and bottom of the "box" which allowed the "l" part of the truck frame to slip inside the Camaro frame. From here I measured and clamped things into place. After the inner section of the "box" of the Camaro frame was welded to the "l" section of the truck frame, I cut away the "7" shaped section on the outboard part of the Camaro frame. From here I started using the remains of the C channel that was removed from the truck as boxing plates. I hope this all makes some sense!!

**Edit, the file is too large for me to post, I can email the image if you'd like**

[Kabwe]

Consider a Monte Carlo front end for a AD truck its not as wide as the camaro clip.

[PDW HOTRODS]

I have used Camaro sub-frames on 3 47-53 Chevy pick-up's.
It works great. You can't run a wide tire, but I ran a 15x7 with
no problems. I have also used 78-87 Monte. It is narrower, and
works great also. I don't know how to post pics here, but it
sounds like you have a great start.