"BUILD: 1970 C10 LWB--->SWB “Jumping Cholla”

[nicklear36]

Great idea with the inner rockers

[loudchevy]

I had mentioned in an earlier post about converting this LWB to a SWB. I moved the C10 into the garage on Thursday night and I started the middle frame surgery on Friday and finished it up on Saturday. The whole process went very well and I'm happy with how it turned out. I watched plenty of videos on YT and looked at threads here on how to do it and I thought this was the best way I saw it done. I took my time laying out the cut lines and cut short of the lines to give me plenty of metal to remove to get a perfect fit. After about 8 mock ups, I was happy with the fit. The boy and I spent a lot of time measuring the frame to make sure it was straight, level, square. Once all our diagonal frame measurements were good, I burned in the welds on the outer frame, alternating between sides and only doing 3-4 inch sections at a time. I sanded down all the welds on the outer frame and repeated the same process on the inner sides. I was pretty happy with the penetration from the inner welds that came through on the freshly cleaned outer. While those welds were cooling down, I cut up some fish plates to weld on the inside. I sanded down the inner frame welds and clamped on the fish plate and burned them in.

[loudchevy]

I also got the rear cab body mount removed and the holes drilled in the new location 12" back. I love removing rivets, they're so much fun! The rest of the frame will get painted to match the front. Then I need to pick up some fasteners and bolt the mounts into place.

Aftermath of the process.....Nice little pile of frame crud/dirt, wire wheel wires, and cut off wheel and sanding disc material. Miller Lite can gave it perspective.