Long to short conversion

[mx574]

Hello. I bought my truck in August 2001 and it was a daily driver until summer 2007 when I got another truck. I tries to sell this one(dont get mad) it is a 1969 3/4 ton long bed. I wanted a 1/2 ton short bed. i could not sell it so a friend of mine suggested that i make it a short myself. I told him he was crazy. He kept working on me and sending me links to guys already doing it. I ended up buying another long bed just to cut up and see if our work was worth anything. Our work came out pretty good so we decided to cut up my truck. I parked my truck around Nov/Dec 2007. The black truck with flames is the project. The white bed is the bed i bought to use.

[mx574]

here are pictures of the bed shortening process. We found a guy on this website doing it to a suburban making it like a tahoe. my hat is off to him. It is a lot of work. He is how we learned to cut the bed the way we did. Make level cuts vertically and horizontal to cut out the wheel well. Then do it again taking out the twelve inches and move your wheel well forward. Behind the wheel there is no trick you just have to cut through the bed. So 12 inches from in front of the wheel and 8 inches behind the wheel.

[mx574]

The white bed was in pretty good shape but the back where the tailgate is was bad. Since you have to cut the back off anyway we decided(sorry my buddy's name is Ryan, he is the one who talked me into this project and helped me a ton along the way, when i say we i mean ryan and i) to use the back off of my truck. So in the pictures where the bed is back together the white and black are because we used two different beds.

[mx574]

I am having a terrible time trying to get pictures on here. I am computer retarded. I could not get pictures of pulling the cab but when we where temporarily finished with the bed we proceeded to the frame. Here are pictures of us taking the exhaust off right after we removed the cab. My trck has trailing arms so the section where we wanted to remove from is directly under the cab. Once again remove 20 inches total, 12 in front of rear wheels and 8 from behind. In this case we also did a little research and found that for a stronger cut you need 24 inches. You do a twelve inch cut on the top half of frame and next to that cut twelve inches out of the bottom and when it comes together you have to weld sort of an S on the side. this cut is stronger than just one straight up and down.

[mx574]

here is a picture of the frame cut before it got welded back together and the four pieces we removed.

[mx574]

Frame got welded. My truck is getting lowered with air. We made our own notch. Went to local metal supply and fabricated it. Frame got cleaned up and painted. Two and a half inch drop spindles were installed. I am also converted my truck from 8 lug to 6 so new rotors for the front. All the airbags were installed.

[mx574]

Cab went back on and i started to shve. Drip rail, cowl, marker lights, door handles, inside of doors(speakers), center section of dash, and my gas tank relocation. A lot of metal work which leads to a lot of bondo.

[mx574]

well that catches us up to date. It took just over a year to get to this stage. I started laying bondo about a week ago. I am waiting for some bed strips to come in and we are going to make a custom bed floor that has stainless bed strips with no bolt heads on the top and we are going to put metal in between. So it will be designed like stock wood floor but with metal that will get painted instead of wood.

[killer71]

Nice project!!! Lots of hard work here!

[noteron]

NICE lookin project... more pics

[nuke1]

looking good, great iniciative you have there and a great friend, i bet he wants to be the first one to ride in it after it is done.

[67ChevyRedneck]

The bed came out great! I hadn't seen a bed on here done like that before! Very cool. The two fella's that have done the Tahoe conversions do great work! I never thought of cutting up a bed like they did for the tahoes!

[STOCKISH]

Great work. I'll be cutting mine up shortly. Keep it goin'

[mx574]

Thank you guys for all your kind words i appreciate it. It is tough to stay motivated because the progress feels slow at times. Your words are encouraging. I did finish my tailgate which is going to be really nice when all is done. I will try to get pictures of that soon.

[Rokcrln]

Nice job! Yes it is allot of work but if you stay with it then it is all worth it. Hey just for another way of shorting the bed look into the LFD's Low Buck truck build and you will get some other ideas as well. It might save you a few feet of welding for the next one

Kevin
LFD Inc.

[jb4short]

WOW- that's pretty ambitious....awesome!

[mx574]

Kevin from LFD, thanks for the words of encouragement. I watched these build boards for a while (about a year and a half) before posting and you are the man. You do clean detailed work and I aspire to learn a craft such as you posess. Keep up the good work and keep producing awesome rides. I wish I lived closer to you so I could see some of your projects in person. Anyway, sorry for not posting for a while, I started a new job. Doesn't mean i have neglected my truck. I have worked on it six of the last seven days( i have a wonderful wife). My bondo work is beginning to take shape and not too bad either. Ryan and I worked the last three nights hooking up my air bag system. My tanks and compressors got mounted. We plumbed all the air lines. I have a temporary wired setup. I can hook three wires to a battery and use the system to go up and down. It moves way to fast with just a cab.

[mx574]

got some parts yesterday from brothers in corona. i got a outer grill, two wheel well fenders that go in the bed and a patch panel for the front fender drivers side up by the front bumper. i am still waitng for my bed strips to come in.

[killer71]

well hurry up and post some picts lol...

[mx574]

hey killer71 or anyone who can help. i mentioned earlier in this post i was having difficulty posting photos. well i took 5 photos the other day and i cannot upload any. Everytime i try it tells me that my photo dimensions are too large and i need to manually resize. any tips?

[c10hunting]

Get a photobucket.com account and upload them there. Then you can post the image code here and it will show them. If that makes any since to you . Or you can e-mail them to me and I will host them. Benpeek893@msn.com . Cool project there.

[Richard8971]

I might have to keep an eye on this one. Looks like it's going to turn out awesome. I love the work. Keep us posted!

D

[Mike Bradbury]

Photobucket is the way to go lets you post nise big photos without having to resize on your computer first. Very easy and well worth it for posting on forums.
I am going to be doing the same conversion (I keep saying soon but I haven't jumped yet) to my C20, and I am curious if you had to change the lower control arms when you converted to 6 lug? I am planning on changing to 5 and have heard that a LCA change is needed. Trailing arms on a 3/4 ton is rare, that should be an easy mod. Mine is leaf suspended and am going to convert.
Are you planning on suicide doors? or are you going to put an electrically actuated mechanism on them?
I like the shaved drip rail look, was that a pain/ worth it?

[OARNGESI]

That looks way better as a shortbed

[mx574]

c10hunting, thanks for the info, i am going to look into getting an account with photo bucket, thank you for the offer and if i have difficulty i will email you pictures.
Mike Bradbury- what year is your truck- the key to this answer is disc brakes did not come on these trucks until 1971. the control arms are 1971-1987 for c20. My truck the guy who owned it before me put disc brakes on it- meaning he got the front end off of a 1971-87 c20. if that is the case you do not have to change the upper or lower control arm. Early Classics out of Fresno makes a c-20 to c-10 conversion spindle. it bolts onto c-20 control arms and allows you to run a c-10 rotor. no i am not going to suicide the doors and yes i am going to get an electric mechanism, have not looked into it too much yet but autoloc has a 35 and 50 lb solenoid. I heard on older vehicles to rum 50lb. Yes the drip rail was a lot of work(pain in the but) but totally worth it if you plan on keeping your truck for a while. the key is to work in short. cut 4 inches out and tack weld the 4 inches. then cut 4 inches then weld 4 inches. There are three pieces of metal that come together at the drip rail and they form most of the cab structure so if you cut too big of a section you may lose some trueness in your cab. Now get to work and cut up your truck (ha ha). Anyway thank you guys for the info. Hope to have pictures up soon. P.S. i ordered my billet insert for phantom grill today (it is *****in)