[68 TT]

To get me going sooner I am going to do the axle over spring swap with the stock truck 12-bolt. It may give me the ride height I want and I can build a set of Cal-Trac style traction bars for it this way too.

I'm going to get this thing on the road first before I go jumping into the trailing arm conversion. We will see how it does with leaf and some traction bars first, maybe I won't need to do the trailing arm conversion.

I am probably going to install a car 12-bolt rear end into this thing after it is on the road as well. Most likely it will come out of my Camaro.

The plans for the Camaro include going back to a forced induction engine making in excess of 700 hp to the wheels so the stock axle 12-bolt that is in there now will need completely upgraded. Might as well just build a whole new rear end instead and use the existing one in the truck. The truck will only make 400 to 450 hp to the wheels with the 427 short block I am putting together for it. The car 12-bolt can handle that all day long and it is easy to get 1350 U-joint pinion yokes for it too.

The wheels I have for the Camaro need to be changed to a smaller width to work the best with the 275/60 drag radials I am going to run. They work best on an 8" rim so the 10's that I have need changed out. The fronts are 6's because it was running an iron head big block with twin front mounted turbos so it had a bunch of nose weight. The new engine will be an aluminum head 6.0 liter LS engine with a single turbo so it will weigh several hundred pounds less up front. I can now run a skinnier 4" front wheel with a smaller width tire. This leave the whole set of nearly new Center Line wheels I had on the Camaro as spare parts. Might as well use them on the stepside too.

This means I am going to convert this thing to 5 on 4-3/4 bolt pattern. The Camaro 12-bolt swap will take care of the rear end. A set of new body style 1/2-ton 5 on 5 rotors will fit onto the 2500 LD spindles and I can redrill them to 5 on 4-3/4 so that will take care of the front. I will see if they can be machined down to work with GM hubcentric wheels, if not no big deal. I can always convert it to a different spindle that will take different rotors if I really want to run a set of rally wheels on it for some reason. I might mess around with the 6-lug rotors and see if they can be redrilled too.

Working mid shift has really messed me up. I am starting to get used to it now though. Now I need to get a little money saved up and get some work done.