1951 GMC Panel Truck Project, do I keep it 4x4? - Part 1

this hot rod is sitting in limbo and waiting for the boy to do a bunch of work on her to which he has started he's uh being proactive here so he's going to be replacing all the seals and bearings and doing all that jazz uh he's got to order some new drums just waiting for some e-brakes to come in he's kind of doing the same because this is his whole front end kit that he got i think this is like an ebay thing he was saying so this is all ripped apart and he's going to redo the seals in there put all new bushings tie rods track bar like everything is going to be swanky new so kind of waiting for the finish on that before we uh continue plugging away at the truck here so once that's done then we're going to bolt the cab down i do have the transmission up and in um we figured out what the transmission mount is so we got to make that he has sourced out some uh [Applause] some drive shafts now they are not from the diesel this is the rear shaft off the diesel and these are the ones he's got but the u-joints everything all look like they're the same size so we'll run the shafts i really doubt just gonna spin these usually it'd be a u-joint or something you'd wreck unless like a driveshaft had a kink or something weird in it then that would probably cause it to break but uh but he's got that his hanger brush so he's got a few a lot of the bits he's missing we're gonna have to shorten the shaft from the transmission this one similar to what i did on the general i guess because we did move the motor back but when we get a little closer when i can actually get it close to the ground that we can do something that'll be a bonus so anyways that puts me into a free spot here and i kind of on the fence what i want to work on whether you actually want to bring in that convertible at gmc again because you know that was kind of a filter for me i kind of have a hankering to sort of work on that sedan delivery or that panel wagon so i'm thinking that's my tomorrow's plan is i'm going to go dig that thing out uh my list of bits that i have for it is i got a dakota front end so i'm gonna try that uh mostly because i have it it's a rack i don't know it'll be a better fit for the body than an s10 because yes 10 you have to run reverse wheels and do all kinds of weird junk otherwise the front wheels always look too tucked in on there so i have a dakota front end i'm going to try it and i have some ford rear ends so that'll work out for the back i have an original chassis for that truck so that is what i'm gonna use under it uh but anyways tomorrow i'm gonna go grab all that stuff and i'll kind of get started mucking around with that thing should be a pretty quick build well i'm not sure not sure if i'm feeling the uh the roadster or i actually want to do a little bit of work on this thing right now so i shouldn't say that i'm actually going to do some work on that uh i don't dig this 4x4 thing going on though so it's most likely gonna get a chassis swap again uh but i do have uh an original chassis not for this style of truck but i do have an original chassis i mean there's a lot of work been done to this truck to to fit this combo but the problem with it is uh this frame is like super rusty under here so i don't really want to use it and the motor seized and there's so much going wrong with it i'm not very happy the way it's mounted so yeah gonna switch it up on like a 90s chassis [Music] but uh she's not very pretty so i'll swap her out put an original chassis underneath i have a dakota front clip so i know that seems odd but i'm going to use that just because of the width i really hate the uh the s10 clips they do weird stuff not happy with them so that is the plan i'm going to clip the other chassis drag this in pull this one out and we'll go from there so here's the clip i'm gonna use i'm not a fan of the weird six bolt but i'm going to uh you can change those hubs out and get the five bolt uh rotors so i'll probably do that it does have a rack the reason i'm going to use the decoder though is because it's quite a bit wider than the s10 it's not as wide as a camaro clip but it's not as wide or as narrow as an s10 so it's a perfect in between so with the rack and i don't know you don't have any weird stuff happening in the front of the truck so that is my reasoning for it i've just kept it for just that so i'm gonna get this in i'm gonna scab off some of the junk up front and then i gotta go get uh my original frame or an original style frame so and that's something i acquired so i'm just going to use it i have some s10 frames that i could clip and things but they're just quite a bit wider overall i think the look of the truck will be better i wouldn't need to put any weird wheels on it i can kind of keep a stock looking something if i go with the five bolt i have a bunch of four diffs that i could use so i have uh this chassis which i gotta pull the box and get all this stuff out of here but this is probably the original chassis that would have been underneath that that panel van so i want to get the box off i'm not sure where i'm going to put it but get the box off then the frames clean and then i can so i'm going to start with this frame and then i can bob the front i can get the clip situated in there and just because i know the wheelbase is right so as long as i get the wheels in that vicinity i might move it just a hair ahead because these old trucks the wheel always sat forward in the back although i can't change that much but i do want to change the bring the front up a little bit to get that centered nice and then uh start bolting her back down should work okay seeing how this front end has already got its own share problems she don't need to be on there then box is the only thing i got on bolt and i think she's partially there already too bad it's got a cool dub check that thing out she's got a nice hand pump there's the reservoir that is such a cool setup but yeah i think that's going to be the plan now to get it out of here that's the second part [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] hmm [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] well i know i'm kind of all over the place kind of on the fence with this thing it uh it's crunchy under there but it's not terrible it's doable i don't know i think a lot of the work has been done to this thing like you can see somebody's basically trying to run all the gm stuff so whatever it's not a big deal that's okay they kind of got the steering column mounted it's set up as a stick a 4x4 i'm pretty sure i stole the clutch pedal out of it but i'll i can always redo that uh kind of on the fence i know the motor's junk but we could always put an ls in it because these small blocks are just stinking hard to find around here so is that you know it's kind of a little butch but he has kind of set up the hvac in there sort of [Laughter] we can work with it i don't know i'm kind of on the fence here i totally wanted to axe it all but now i'm like i don't know now it's got to come ahead a wee bit because it's not lined up well in the back i think the body's not fully mounted properly right now i know they moved the diff back to get the wheelbase correct no i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know you know as weird as this is this might be a not bad driver i'm not really into him but i'd rock it for a bit why not so i still have my running boards left over that i didn't use from the general which i stole this set that did belong on here so we'd have to revamp that but i kind of think this thing could be cooler as a 4x5 something this big slammed down i don't know i'm kind of yeah i think it would just look good lift it up well i wouldn't lift it much beyond this it'd just be a functional truck for somebody right reliable modern they're not my cup of tea i wouldn't mind bringing it down a little bit just so the frame isn't exposed underneath that'd be my only peeve i'd work on that [Applause] but yeah so i'm not sure what to do with the wheelbase if it's right or wrong i would try to get this kind of centered up i would just cut all of this off because it's not necessary yeah not too sure i'm uh starting to shift gears here now that i pulled it out against aaron at it plus it's not really i'm not really building it for myself i think i'm going to build this one to flip at some point i mean i am going to drive it a bit like that's how i pay myself for doing this [Laughter] somebody's got to work all the bugs out of it right so this would all work the only problem with these trucks is the fronts are so wide i'm not a fan of this where the wheels stick past the fenders but the way a lot of guys do it is uh we pretty much just cut and widen this front fender come up here do a little slice across down we can bring this fender out to cover the wheel nicely the back for some reason they always cover well i don't know why i can run full-sized diffs in there and never have a problem so we'll see we will see i think we got into the uh peel and stick stuff years ago before i owned it as a joke now the joke's on me now i got to clean it up come on there we go now i think originally the floor was cut out because the idea is we wanted to lower it some more so we might keep going with that theme i don't mind the four wheel drive would be nice if it's at stock height four-wheel drive standard that's kind of cool but i'm not married to that i could as well put an automatic in it i don't know i'll see let's see how it goes here maybe the plans will completely derail and change yet but for now i think i'm gonna push it in and have a better look at it and maybe we won't use the go two wheel drive let me know what you think i mean regardless i'm gonna bring it in the shop i'm gonna lift it up have a better look at everything see how far off we are with the wheelbase uh like clearly this guy has moved stuff i'll show it like he unbolted the spring purchase and he had moved it down the frame so this is really not anything back here supporting the back of this thing so i'd probably add two sticks of rail behind there just to support the back of the cab may not be necessary but i'd rather have that but she's not bad for rust or anything we got a little bit here there's a lot on the other side same thing so this is a little weak but that's a pretty easy one to fix yeah well anyways i'm gonna get her in the shop and love a better look [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] well it has been a while since i've been under here this used to belong to a friend of mine and we kind of horse traded and i got it from him uh so i think what all happened was somebody had moved this is probably who knows what kind of a chassis you know a half ton chassis but somebody clearly just moved everything back um i think it was semi-mounted but i'm not happy the way the mounts are made and stuff so i'm gonna redo a bunch of this stuff so i think the original one i don't know if the body was that far ahead i don't think so seems weird if it was but you can't deny that the mounts were there and it looks like it was bolted up sure looks like it so anyways i believe the story was he wanted it lower so we started mucking around with it and then i had a better body that suited what he wanted to do or a pickup truck so we kind of horse traded so anyways here it is [Laughter] and uh we're gonna try to make this work uh i think the general census is we're gonna leave it four by four but uh everything's pretty stuck and tight so i'm gonna need a lot of parts i know that nothing major these were and still sort of are a common truck but they're kind of they kind of gotten high up in value now people want them so it's got a five speed which is kind of cool the motor is roached so i'm gonna see if i have another one or i can stick something else in it it is fuel injected there was a tank i've got to see if i still have it the feller had a new tank new brake lines if you did a bunch of work the other fella whoever had it before my friend so but she's pretty crunchy nothing holy though it's just just a a good case of flake going on here so anyways i'd like to lower this some more i'd like because the running boards run up to this edge so i'd like to see if i can drop this a couple inches as much as i can uh looks like it's doable other than uh well it's not even bad like they put the hump of the transmission in but it's like right for some reason the firewall they didn't touch you can see right maybe you can see right there if we notch that out we're okay i might have to lift the floor up a little bit here to clearance around the transfer case but that shouldn't be a big deal then at least you know i think i can get another three inches three inches yeah three inches isn't bad if i can go like the four i get this thing right to here that'd be pretty awesome but yeah i know a little off by the maybe it was right i don't know maybe it did sit on those mounts i don't know but i'm thinking i'm going to make new mouse because those are just i don't know they don't seem very strong i feel they're not very strong [Music] uh i don't know what i'm doing yet [Music] i think what i got to do is try to lift the body up and see what's going on here see if i can figure out where this wheelbase should be or what this feller's plan was when he had it i'm gonna mount it where his body mounts are but i don't feel it's right uh but i can't push that back anymore i think the dude started off with the wrong wheelbase totally so he's moved the spring purchase back we know that now we can loosen the u-bolts and kick diff back a little bit that's a doable option just to try to correct this wheel base to make me happy anyways it doesn't look like the feather did anything with that uh that said i'm gonna probably need some new u-bolts i'm gonna need a lot of new stuff with this thing but anyways i'll make a nice vehicle for somebody so it's not a big deal all right well let's lift away and see what happens here well i kind of disconnected all the wiring i'm uh trying to work with the weirdness that's going on here um yeah i don't know basically i'm just going to lift the body off and see what's going on because some things just aren't making sense to me and i want to see what i'm working with here because the wheelbase is kind of weird i don't know there's just a lot of stuff going on and hopefully i can make some sense of this so uh i'm gonna loosen my brake lines because well this one's got a fitting on here which is to a new line so i'll deal with that one this one is it's okay but it's kind of crunchy i might just cut them and deal with it that's up here i'll see if i can loosen it off everything just seems super crunchy on this thing so i kind of want to take everything apart and have a look see how things are all mounted up and yeah anyways enough cabin we're going to lift her up [Music] well this is what we got and the more i keep staring at it the amount of work that a guy's got to do to make this all usable is not getting me pumped [Laughter] uh so here is my dilemma with the body mounts they were all kind of just weird stuff like this is not a very acceptable body mount as far as i'm concerned uh yeah well i'm thinking i might switch gears and uh still keep it 4x4 but let's bring the whole thing into the 2000s or something maybe i'm gonna have to see about another different donor chassis this thing's kind of kind of crap to start with i think like everything is just so crusty i'm really starting to second-guess myself on this one i think by the time i muck with it all i'm gonna have about as much into it as i would like a newer chassis realistically i got to start all over i think making all my mounts and stuff anyways so we just might switch gears boy it's a lot of work this stuff [Laughter] yeah purse well i got the choice i can do that i'm gonna see what i got for donors i think that's gonna be the plan because i'm not digging what this thing is i don't like how big the kick is there's a lot of things i don't like here i could put new sticks in but the price of steel i can almost buy a truck for what it would cost me to put new sticks in the back there so like that motors junk i don't know any story on the transmission i don't know anything uh the motor i know is tight as heck so she's no good so yeah i'm gonna see what i can find for a donor and uh we're gonna go from there so i guess what i'm going to do is i'm going to leave this one at that because i got to go hunt and find some stuff this video is kind of going off track all over the place eh i've gone from four-wheel drive to two wheel drive no two will drive the four-wheel drive i don't know i don't even know where i'm at now all i know is i was gonna use this chassis and now the more i'm staring at it it's freaking rough i don't know i think by the time i rebuild everything on it i am financially just this is a disaster but anyways i think financially i'm better off just grabbing one of the kids trucks buying one of those off of him that run and drive and then take the the chassis and the powertrain use it under here i'm pretty determined to keep this as a four-wheel drive but she's gonna not be crazy high i don't wanna i guess if somebody else wants to they'll be able to put a lift kit and do whatever they wanna do but i don't i think i'd rather look stockish to a little bit lower but four wheel drive functional that's my kind of my game plan with this one but uh yeah again i guess sorry it's a not a great video but i'll it'll be better on the next one [Laughter] anyways as always guys thanks for watching and uh we'll catch you on the next one later [Music] you

Channel: Halfass Kustoms

Views: 143,217

Rating: 4.9125175 out of 5

Keywords: hot rod, chevy truck, body swap, 1951 GMC Panel truck, panel truck, 50 Panel, grave digger, GMC truck, Rat rod, 4x4 conversion, chevy Panel truck, panel truck 4x4, panel truck hot rod, 1953 chevy panel truck, 1948 chevy panel truck, 4x4 conversion kit for chevy truck, frame swap

Id: 5Bds_labKYU

Length: 29min 13sec (1753 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 17 2021