I sold some mounts to a nice local guy in Gypsum ~70 miles away, and a few weeks later, as such things sometimes happen, he abandoned his project. he wanted to know if I wanted the mounts back to resell, sure, and I will buy the truck too! I get a lot of feedback on swaps and i am always up for trying new things so I always have a "development article" (project) going. he had all the parts, albeit disassembled, and the cab just lazily sitting on an ext cab s10 chassis. just the way I like buying them!
with the 41-46 swaps behind me again (see the pre 47 forum) I decided to implement some of the aforementioned changes to the 47-55.1 kit stuff on this truck. the reason is twofold: first, I have it. second, ks just passed the law that says you can title anything 60 years old and older that hasnt been on the tax rolls for a decade on a bill of sale without an inspection. I normally have trouble with inspections, mostly with the officers conducting them, so this means now i can avoid them with my 50s ADs, previously the law was 1950 and newer required inspection.
nick picked up his 46, the 55 was still at the storage building, and instead of loading my heavy car trailer on my 8mpg silverado I decided to try out the hitch I got for my also recent purchase 2 owner cherokee.
the cab gave just the right amount of weight to let the tires self center (a bare frame would not)
i pulled the cab off using the a frame I borrowed from my neighbor "for a week or two" 4 years ago
it has a little rust, for the most part just flat work but it needs the lower cowls replaced. and one cab corner I can change. if I have to. I guess.
then roll the chassis in for a little middle surgery, planning on removing 7 inches. I havent done this work yet, normally i have more backlog of work to post, but one thing I remember is that shortening the 98+ frames (this is a 2000 2.2 truck) might be easier to just cut square aft of the factory splice, the extra boxing on the 98+ frame can make a lot of work to grind out the splice.
so maybe a blunt cut and fishplates are in order.
regular project followers will notice I am STILL in my 19x19 attached. there is a good reason for that. we bought two more properties, one right after the other, so the money I saved up for insulating and HVAC in the 30x50 storage building got spent on those instead. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
follow along! I promise no stretches of inactivity like I sometimes do. I wil ltell the reason for that in a bit, maybe closer to mounted and rolling.