I have a 1958 ford fleetside that I want to make four wheele drive. Not sure what would be best. Either put the body on a 4x4 frame or convert the 58 on the old frame.

 

Frame swaps are a BIG job unless you mean using a 58 4x4 frame. Almost any suspension/driveline swap onto the stock frame would be easier. I don't know how many 4x4ers hang around here tho, mostly restorers and hot rodders here. As soon as you make a few more posts (10?) the search function will become available to you.

 

AX, I FINALLY got around to checking out how many posts you need to have in before you can use the search function. Seems it isn't written down anywhere that I could find. Anyway, new users can use the search function as soon as they register. It may have been different in the past, but like you, I've been assuming there was some magic minimum number of posts. There isn't any more, if there ever was.

 

Thanks George. With so many new posters asking questions that have been heavily covered many times I assumed they couldn't search right away.

 

W.W.

Our trucks are called "Styleside", not by the C#@%y name of "Fleetside".
I've a book on "Marmon-Harrington" the Company that did the Coversions for Ford & Mercury Trucks & it would be far simpler to do that then Transplant it to an updated frame.

 

Thanks for all of the information. As far as the book on Marmon-Harrington. Where did you get it and does it have information for the conversions.

 

20 years ago my brother and I made a 4x4 out of a 60 ford big window, short wide bed. We used the running gear from a 75 Ford F-150 that my brother had wrecked. We used a universal engine mount kit for the engine and fabbed our own tranny/transfer case mount. I don't remember too many of the details (i've wiped out alot of brain cells since then) I know that we spent alot of time measuring and figuring (which drove mom crazy as we had the engine hanging in the tree in the front yard for months).
Do alot of measuring on your current truck, do alot of measuring on your donor truck(Having a complete or fairly complete donor truck helps alot). Go back and remeasure everything from every angle. Remeasure again, and then... ... I don't know if I mentioned this... ...measure everything

Those years look really mean as a 4x4
Good luck
Bobby

 

There's a couple of movies with 4x4 '57-60s... my favourite is the '59 stepside in "Leatherface".

Having converted my '57 panel back from 4wd to 2wd, there isn't all that much to it. Really, it's "just" the front axle and transfer case. This truck had been put together using a married transfer case and NP 435 off a '71ish Ford truck, with a crossmember made from a chunk of C-channel with plates off the ends to bolt to the frame rails. (The front driveshaft looked kind of short and steep; the stock transfer case would've been located further to the rear) The other bits looked like they'd come off an original '59/60 4x4: Front axle was a closed-knuckle 44, an inch or so wider than the rear axle after I'd pulled them off and stored them side by side. (Is that normal?)Springs and stuff also appeared to be correct, taller than a regular F100, and the rear had a big fat 4" lift block between the axle and spring, which matched the pictures in the Ford parts catalog.

So, anyway, the easiest would be to get stuff off a '59/60 4x4. Now, if you've got such a donor, maybe it'd be smarter to swap the sheet metal off the '58 chassis onto the 4x4. With the sheetmetal off the donor, sandblast and paint the frame, replace the brake lines, mount a gas tank to the frame.