I've noticed the last couple days there have been some threads on cabs and beds, if they're worth fixing, what a good one costs, etc. I'm trying to figure the same out on my truck and a friend of mine has made me an offer i'm thinking on.

First i've got a '65 short bed 2-wheel drive and a long bed '66 parts truck. The undersides of both of them looks similare to the E-bay truck that was brought up in a thread earlier.

He's got a '77 short bed with ZERO cab rust and the bed inside part is good that he wants to trade me for another car i have.

I was thinking that since my cab can be bolted on to the '77 frame that i could cut the floor and cab mounts out and put them under my cab. Massive amount of work aside i think this can be done. I need to get back over there with a tape measere and confirm, but visually it looks do-able.

The bed on my truck is where it gets ugly to fix. The passenger side was backed into a tree, this bent the bumper back into the bed corner. Its bent so bad i can't put a tailgate on it and the frame is bent after the spring mount. Fixing the bed would involve replacing the corner of the bed and putting a new skin on the side. I was thinking why not just reskin the '77 bed with the sides off the long bed parts truck i have. But that does raise quesions about the mouldings down the side of the bed, the 77 being a couple inchs longer and all. The big consern here is if it could be made to 'look right', somebody that really knows these trucks would spot it but to the average car guy would it look right.

So besides being time consuming does this sound like it would even be possible.

 

The construction on how the doors hang, the jambs, rockers, pillars, firewall, and all that stuff are completely different. I would venture to say that it is just as different (geometry, not quality) as a chevy or dodge. The bed construction is also completely different. THe dentsides are double wall from top to bottom, where the slicks are assembled from many pieces and parts. The 67-72 truck beds are much closer to being similar. I agree that it could be done, but It just seems like it would be tons of work.

 

My not-attached-to-a-vehicle reply? Buy another truck. You're creating an incredible amount of work for something that can simply be bought with a modest cash outlay. One of the guys in our club who is a welder even figured this out and simply spent a couple thousand to buy a nice solid truck and sold his for parts. Don't make your hobby a painful chore.