Thread: 500 Caddy/G Body Swap

Tweet

Coming along nicely Mike!!!! Nice fix on the front clip mounts!!!!! Getting to be a very interesting build.....

Yeah Dave even though this is still in the early stages of the project I'm really pretty happy with the way it's shaping up. I had yesterday off so I figured I’d go ahead and get the 9” under it and free up some floor space in the shop.

How come the jobs you figure will go fairly quickly end up being the ones that fight you every step???????? I figured 4 hours tops to do this, even throwing in the time to box the lower control arms and installing new bushings. It ended up taking about twice that long.

Oh well, at least it’s under the car and I at least have emergency brakes now. One of the neat things that happened on this was a few months ago my boss was cleaning out his garage and came across a new set of rear springs and shocks he had bought several years ago for a Monte Carlo project of his that he ended up selling before he installed them that he donated to my project.

Hopefully this coming weekend I’ll actually get the engine and transmission in the truck and start getting mounts figured out.

It sits just a bit high in the back right now and I may go back to the stock springs, but I'll wait until I get the engine and trans in to make a final decision.

Well I got the nose to come down a bit

Yep I got the 500 sitting in it now. It fits but it's a lot more snug than it looks at a glance. The exhaust manifolds are a bit tight and I may have to relieve the frame just a bit for pipe clearance. The steering clearance is adequate but I wouldn’t want it any closer and it looks like I’ll have just enough room to close the hood with a 1” carb spacer and drop base air cleaner. Thank god I’ll be running aftermarket AC to I didn’t have to trim the stock AC box. Basically there is just one sweet spot to make it fit.

Anyway here it sits, and the next project will be to get a crossmember built (the trans mount is farther back on the TH400 than the original Th250. It was a good way to spend a weekend

Nice work Mike!!! That big old overwidth Caddy looks kewl in there!!!!! Heck, still have room for a Procharger blower!!!!!

You know Dave the funny thing is this thing is going to be more easy to service than the small block it replaces. Everything like plugs, front monted distributor, fuel pump etc are all right out there in the open.

Well I finally got around to getting back on the El Camino today and decided to tackle the crossmember.

It’s nothing elaborate but it is functional. I figured I’d do everything on one shot so I set the X pipe and mufflers in place so I could figure out where I needed to put reliefs in.

The crossmember is basically a piece of 2” thick wall pipe with pieces of angle iron welded to the ends to fit inside the frame rails (then drilled and bolted in) and the foot for the transmission mount from a donor crossmember welded to it. The pipe was heated and exhaust reliefs hammered into it. It strong enough to hold the weight of the transmission and me doing pull-ups on it without bending so I figure it will do fine.

Total investment was nice too $0

Should work out fine, Mike...pipes look really good too!!! Anxious to see how you like the X-pipe, put an H-pipe on my pickup.... Curious to see if we both just wasted our time and money or if they actually help!!!!!!

Ok so in spite of what we in the South West tell you we do run into some rust occasionally. In a lot of cases it’s in the floors due to water leaking in windows and soaking the carpet and not being caught.

Although the rest of the truck is solid the floor behind the drivers seat was rusted out. I originally bought the truck as a parts truck and while I knew about this it really didn’t matter at the time.

This is going to be a driver not a show car and the floor of Monte Carlo parts car had surface rust but was solid so it donated a patch. I’ve still got to grind the welds and I’m debating whether to blast the whole floor or just wire wheel the surface rust and coat it, I guess I’ll figure that out later.

Guess I need a reminder every once in a while about why I'll never move back to rust country

Once I got the carpet up I also found out that it had originally been a bench seat truck and at some point someone had added the brackets for the split bench…….just wish they had gotten the passenger side in straight, I’ll have redo those at some point, but it shouldn’t be a big deal.

Should do just fine Mike... a bit of blasting and grinding and it'll be ready for primer! Still waiting to see which body line you decid to "relocate".!!!!

Dave basically what I'm looking at is is lowering the the body line between the door and front of the rear tire down to match the line on the door and soften the body line under the quarter window to also match the door.

As trying to match the body line behind the tire with the lowered body line on the doors and fenders would put the new body line down where the marker light is I plan on completly eliminating that one.

Well, nothin' like a bit of pingin' and dingin' to keep a guy busy!!!!!! Going to work out great on the lower line, nothing sez it has to be continued on the back side of the wheel well anyway!!!!!

I haven’t done a lot with the El Camino in the last couple of weeks but I did repair the drivers side door striker. I don’t know if anybody picked up on the jury rigged repair the truck had in the picture of the floor repair, but I was kind of afraid of what I was going to find when I pulled the aluminum plate off.

The sheetmetal in the jamb was surprisingly good with only stress cracks and no rust…..the backing plate the holds the captive nut and reinforces the area was a different story. Having the Monte Carlo parts car sure came in handy again.

I’ve also been kicking around that I was going to do with the rear bumper. I really didn’t like the idea of having the painted front bumper and chrome rear one. I also didn’t think a rounded roll pan in the rear would look quite right with the more square front bumper.

I came across this “tucked bumper” while I was looking at roll pans, I think it might look OK and might be the best option, but I’m open to suggestions and comments.

I'd maybe think about narrowing the bumper, trimming up the ends, etc and making it flush mount with the body sides... Maybe even shorten the overall length a bit??? Could even do the front bumper cover in sheetmetal and make the front end look like the rear... Just a few more hours of fab time Mike, what the heck?????

This is looking really cool, Mike! How's the big block Dodge shop truck doing?