Thread: pontiac frame swap question

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first of all Hi I am new to this group. ok now for my question. I have a 1930 pontiac 4 door sedan that I am looking to redo, I am thinking of going the retro rod way keep all origonal outside with a modern chassis, brakes, suspension, and engine. I have heard that I should be able to fit the body on a chevy s10 frame I have checked and the wheel base is within an inch of eachother so that is close but before I go and buy a s10 I was wondering if anyone could confirm or deny this info I have heard. any help or other suggestions of frames to use would be greatly appreciated.

thanks

Hi and welcome to our forum. I have never done the S10 frame thing, but I understand there are a couple of variations of them. One is a long bed, and the other is an S15 (not totally sure about that.)

As a casual observer of these swaps, here is what I have seen. First of all you have to get the wheelbase right on the money or it looks goofy. Even an inch or two the wrong way makes it not look good at all. The other problem is that most early cars don't have the room in front of the axle to fit all of the steering and components that modern frames.suspensions like S10 require. Thirdly is the tread width. Modern cars usually have wider treads than the old cars and therefore the wheels end up too far out to the side.

Now, that info could be totally out in left field, and I know some others on here have done some of these S10 type swaps, and they certainly will have better info on this than me.

By the way, you ARE going to put a Pontiac engine in this car, aren't you?

Good luck.

Don

S10 has the steering box stuck out front too far for most old cars. You can switch to a rack and pinion and lose the stock box. BTW, an S15 is just a GMC S10.

O.K., I have a question, playing the devil's advocate. It doesn't seem to matter too much that the rack sticks out the front on an MII setup, so why would it matter if the steering box sticks out a little on a S10 setup? As long as you have room for the radiator, I would think you'd be ok, no??

Thanks for clearing up the S15 confusion Mr. Pope, I was thinking it was the heavier duty version.

I borrowed these from Uncle Bob. The Model A one shows the problem of having too much frame in front of the axle. (Plus about 1,000 other sins)


Don

Ahhhhhhhhhh, my stupid computer froze. Let's try again.