Thread: body swap on S10 or Dakota

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I have a 50 Pontiac car, will it fit easily on to an S10 or Dakota truck frame?

There's no such thing as an easy frame swap. You have to compare the wheelbase of the donor frame to the Pontiac frame. You'll have clearance problems where the frame kicks up to go over the rear end. If you use a frame without a kick up it will sit way too high in back. It would be easier to cut off the front of the Pontiac frame and splice in the front clip from a Camaro or some other more modern cars. An even easier way is to remove the front suspension and weld or bolt in a Pontiac Fiero front crossmember. It has disc brakes and rack and pinion steering. It's similar to the Mustang/Pinto units that everyone uses but doesn't require a kit to install it. It also has 5 bolt wheels. You have to buy custom rotors to get 5 bolt wheels on a M/P unit. You can mount a Ford 8 or 9 inch rear to your stock rear springs. Frame swaps work best on pickup trucks. If you have a rotted frame in the Pontiac then you may still need to do the frame swap. Does anyone else on here that know what frame would be the best fit? The Pontiac frame should be very similar to 49 to 54 Chevy frames. How about it Chevy guys?
AL

I had a link saved that listed a bunch of frames/dimensions for truck frame swaps, but for some reason it no longer can be found by the computer. The guy probably didn't pay his server operator.

A while back Dean reminded us of the Pacer front end swap. Here's a link to a very good discussion and pictures of an installation. http://50chevy.freeservers.com/Pacer_IFS.html#Pacer