I've seen many '80-'86 trucks with a '92-'96 front clip swap but I've been wondering, what about going in reverse of that and putting the older style front clip on say a '94-'97 F250 PSD? How hard would it really be to keep the cab and interior but use a front clip, bed, and doors from my '82? I love my truck but I know it won't last forever and keeping the body alive on a newer truck seems like an original idea. Any thoughts?

 

The swap really only works with 87-91 and 92-96. The wheel wells are different on 80-86 and it looks all wrong. I agree though the 80-86 body style looks sweet too. Since you are willing to swap the bed too, that would take care of that issue. I don't see any reason that you cant do this swap. It will be a bit of work. I would keep the 92-96 doors since they have the right vent window and interior door panel.

 

its possible, someone on here did it on a mason dump they had iirc.

 

Would the door panels swap out onto the old doors? I just know trying to salvage the ones I have would save a whole lot of time and labor for keeping all of the chrome and old style mirrors. I could just do the body work of putting the older chrome and mirrors on the newer door too, just seems like more work

 

The older doors have vent windows that have a pointy front lower corner, as opposed to the ones you got with the pointy corner "cut off". You can swap the panels onto the '80s doors, but you'll have to trim it down or the vent windows won't open (swapping older panels on newer doors works just fine tho, that's what I did with my '90 when I replaced one door with a '94 door). What mirrors you have now, the aero ones with the power adjust? Those actually look pretty good with the older body styles as well, I was actually about to put a set on my '90 dually but I realized they wouldn't work with the slider or a wide trailer... Really for a first step I'd say replace the front clip only (fenders, grille, hood, cowl panel) and see how you like that with the doors and mirrors you have now. Also since you have a PSD with a huge radiator you may need to use a core support from an '83-'86 IDI 6.9 diesel truck, as the gasser core supports are not very deep and your radiator may not fit down properly.

 

I went lookin in the bone yard today and it dawned on me, what about just swapping the vent windows? I also saw a newer truck with the similar (smaller) mirrors. Do the plastic shorty mirrors mount the same as the big fold-aways, just without the lower holes?

 

I have the plastic mirrors, the mount is different, rather longer where it screws in.

 

IIRC there was something about the '80s doors being slightly different from the bricknose and aero trucks as far as glass dimensions go, but I don't recall details... Worth checking into it tho, measure up how wide the main glass piece is - if they match you should be good to go ahead with the vent window swap.