Hello everyone, I am a new member but have been watching these forums for years. I guess you could say I am a Ford fanatic...I own an entire fleet of old Ford power! My question is, how feasible is it to swap bodies on vans that have different motor options? Specifically, from a 4.6 to 6.8? So any that are still interested here is the back story...

Several years back as my family grew (I now have 5 kids I am raising) we decided that family vacations would not be very possible without having a camper. At the time we had a 2001 E150 conversion van with a 4.6l and decided to upgrade to a larger van to accomodate a larger camper. I stumbled across a E350 V10 that we picked up cheap and sold the conversion van for a nice profit. Wow does this thing pull! We are currently pulling a 35ft 10000lb travel trailer (confirmed at the scales) and have drug this thing as far as Florida and back. The van has 220k miles on it and several months back it developed a noise that I believe is in the motor. In a hope it was the cam chains I tore the front of the motor apart and changed the with no success. It's ticking a chattering like its about to come apart. We just got back from a trip with it (pulled the camper for 800 miles in the 95 degree heat) and it still runs the same but I'm just not very confident that it is not going to come apart. With this many miles the body is getting rough (Missouri winters are tough on rust) and the interior is just not as comfortable as we would like. So I found a 2000 E150 conversion van (4.6l) that I would like to swap on to the 99 E350 (has a 2000 6.8L per valve cover label) chassis. They are both the short wheel base and have similar options (rear heat and air). While I have the body off I intend to have the motor rebuilt and make a few mild upgrades (headers, maybe port match intake to heads) so that we can possibly use this thing to pull the camper to the west coast next year.

By the way...I am not a professional mechanic but my brother is and helped me some with the cam chain replacement. For those that are curious...if the motor is in the van you must remove the intake to remove the valve covers, and you must remove the radiator to get the intake out of the engine bay. I probably spent 30 hours doing this and I don't think I would do it again. It was alot of work getting it apart and back together. I can't speak from experience but I think it might be quicker to lift the body off.

I do have other hair-brained ideas...like just converting the E150 to a "heavy half ton" - find a donor 1 ton van and swap axles, springs, motor, trans...but not sure if this is feasible either.

Any info or suggestions are appreciated!

 

Other than ECU and wiring, I think an E150 body would drop right on an E350 chassis. Go for it!

 

That is correct---bodies are essentially all the same mounting scheme from 1992 to end of life in 2013. Beginning 2008 the front end sheet metal changed but body-to-frame points should be the same.

HotAirJunkie has already done one, doing another as we speak!