1963-72 Chevy & GMC Truck Longbed to Shortbed Conversion

hey guys I'm Steve Flanders I'm the host today for the 63 to 72 long bed - short bed installation this I've been involved in about a dozen times so I can tell you from experience it's not that difficult maybe on a scale of 1 to 10 a 4 or 5 it also doesn't take a whole lot of time it's about a six to eight hour project we've had them take as long as 10 but we've also add them to take as short as four what's important is that you use this video in a companion with your printed manual you're going to pick up some detail in a video that the manual might not show you and you're gonna pick up some details in the manual that the video might not show you so use them as a companion together and don't forget to pause the video along the way obviously we're scrunching down a eight hour project into about twelve or thirteen minutes here what I do want to cover before you get started is a couple of mandatory items that you won't be able to do the project without you need six jack stands get six jack stands if they're all about the same size that would be great and also have some jack stands on hand because you're gonna want to be able to shim the jacks jack stands to a perfect height you need a sawzall we find it's the most precision way to cut the frame don't try to use any other cutting method getage sawzall rents a sawzall or whatever and that's how we're gonna cut the frame have some extra saw blades on hand because you're gonna wear them out we have to cut the frame six different times also stock up on eight inch and three-eighths inch drill bits we're gonna burn through a few of these they don't last forever so have enough to get through the project this is something we recommend although it's not mandatory but a air chisel punch combo the chisel will help take the heads off some rivets you have to remove the punch will help remove them out of the frame you don't need this but it saves a ton of time during the project so with that let's go ahead and get started and show you the first step so the first thing you need to do when you're putting this kid in is you got to do all your disassembly and so what that's going to include is taking off anything that connects to the front half of the truck to the back half of the truck between the front and rear cab mounts so we're talking about your exhaust your driveshaft your front to rear wiring harness front to rear brake line parking brake cables and any other accessories that someone may have added during the last 40-plus years one of the key things here is that you're gonna have to disconnect your fuel line and you're gonna have to be really careful when you disconnect it so you don't spill fuel all over your garage or all over your shop floor like we have here so one of the tips I have is maybe just to take a pair of vise grips and pinch that off or have something ready so when you disconnect it that you can plug it right away and push it off to the side because you're going to want to reconnect that later the hard line for your front to rear fuel line it's actually going to slip through the crossmember and you're going to be able to reconnect that in the cab when you're all done with the short bed conversion right now what the guys are doing is lifting the rivet cab up getting a little clearance so the cab mounts can slide out and they're going to support the rear of the cab with the jack stands just underneath the outrigger panel so our next step in this was to add support for the frame and we're just adding support here we're not trying to get any lift or any drop we just want to make sure that when that first cut is made that the frame doesn't either drop down or spring up on us so in order to add that support we've got to Jack's downs on each side one directly under the front cab mount one directly under the front the forward-most bed mount and we've just slid those forward enough and we got a couple shims on the front ones because we had to make up a little space but we've just got them in there kind of snug so that when the frame gets cut we're not dropping or lifting and then the next thing we're going to do is add the template on there drill some holes and make our cut the template is easy to match the frame but it's imperative that the template be mounted flush onto the frame we've realized there are a few variations in frames over the years that require slight modifications to the template or to the frame to get the templates to mount flush one of these variations includes a spoon like relief on the bottom of some frames another variation may be that there are more than one exhaust hanger nevertheless make those modifications so that your template mounts flush Lee to your frame before you begin with drilling or cutting [Music] the next step is to get a jack position directly under the crossmember and we're gonna lift the jack up just enough to get the jack stands out from under the rear part of the frame just about like that and then we're gonna wheel the rear half of the frame out with the template still attached set it right back on the jack stands and finish our frame modifications the next step is to do step number four which is to drill the four holes that are in this panel you got one underneath one on top two on the face we're gonna get those drilled and then step number five is going to be to just make the second cut in the frame to take out that unwanted extra length that turns your long bed into a short bed so let's get that done and then we'll move on to what's next with the template [Applause] all right got our frame drilled got it cut next part of the process is to remove this forward-most bed mount and your rear cab mount so Jamie's already got this side off we're going to take this side off this is where your air chisel and air punch comes in what we did is we use a die grinder and made a little cut underneath makes the chisel go under a little easier gets those to pop off quicker you're definitely going to want to use the air punch to punch the rivets out because they're pressed in from the factory and they're kind of swollen inside there so it takes a lot to get them out anyway once we get those off we're going to take the center of the template and that's going to help us relocate this cab mount the next step is to take the template transform it into its next use and what we're going to do is we're going to cut this out this relief area here what that's going to do is clear the rivets on the bottom side of this crossmember and that's all that gets cut out for now later on that cutout is going to serve another purpose at the rear of the frame but right now we need to get that out of the way so that we can mount this onto the frame and use it to move our cab mounts back the templates going to slide on so you've got some locator holes here marked 72 those are the ones we're going to use and what we're going to do is we're going to line these two holes in the template up with the rear most holes where the cab mount came off and so that's going to slide on like this you know see your holes we're going to use some of our hardware that came with the kit we're going to bolt that in place now just to kind of give you a picture of what we're doing here then we're going to take our cab mount and our cab mount we're gonna drill the 72 holes back here the one that matches 72 holes you used to line it up and when these are drilled the two front holes of the cab mount are going to line up in those holes and once we have those bolted on with the hardware that came with the kit then we're going to use the cab mount itself to template into the frame to bolt the rear two on so what you've effectively done then has moved your cab mount from here back to here [Music] something a bit periods we're just about to put the C channel in but look earlier in the process we use an eighth inch drill bit in our template to drill a couple holes here in the frame on the top and the bottom as well as under the cab we drilled five holes on each side with the eighth inch drill bit now those are pilot holes that's so that when we open those up we're in an exact spot what we're going to do right now since we have our 3/8 drill out that we just used to move our cab mount we're going to use that 3/8 true and we're going to go back and open all these pilot holes up that we drilled earlier to 3/8 so our Hardware off fit through so you've got one two three four on this side same thing on the driver side and then you've got five more to drill on each side underneath the cab and then the last thing we're going to do before we slide it back together is mount our CE channel into the frame here and we'll be ready to migrate the rear half of the frame back under the cab all right now just before you put the C channel in what you're going to want to do is make sure that you have square cuts now as you can see when we cut this we sort of walked off the square line and did a curve in what's that's going to do is it's going to leave a little extra meat on the frame side and that frame side meat is gonna cause a contact when you try to slide the two halves of frame back together so what you're going to want to do is get under there get yourself a square make sure that your cuts are square so in this case we're going to have to go underneath and take a die grinder and cut off this extra meat that we left on the frame so that our two halves of frame are square and they slide back together nice and clean ideally what you want it to look like is this one where you see it's nice and square and this side which is nice and square all right so Jaime's installing the first C channel now one of the key parts of the C channel and actually the whole kit is that we continually reuse original holes on the frame to line stuff up so in this case - oh the holes that he's lining up with are the actual tab mount holes that are left over from where we moved the cab mount back those locate the C channel into a specific spot this is another way that we help keep the frame level and square when we slide it back together jack stands our out got the front of the rear half of the chassis supported by the jack we're gonna use that jack to sort of steer it up back underneath the cab also to help us raise and lower so we can get the frame rails lined up sometimes this right here catches on the back edge of the cab so as you're going under you may actually have to drop it a little lower than you think you do and then once it clears come back up to make it line up and the guys are ready to do that so we're gonna let them handle it and we'll get this frame back together yes KBD yes KTV we're gonna take this piece we cut out of the center of the chassis we're gonna use the relief area that we cut into the template and we're gonna use that to mark this rear section of frame that needs to be modified to shorten the frame all the way down to a short bed so this piece slides on here you're going to line it up with the back edge of the frame and then you're gonna scribe this now what I've done is put a little paint on here so that when you scribe it you can see the scribe line a little better and so we're gonna line this up just like that we use my scribe get a nice scribe line there and then also ascribe the oval hole here that's going to be your rear bed mount hole pull that off and it's good to have a square handy line that up so you can get a square line so you can see when you cut that with a sawzall that you can see you're cutting straight down the frame [Applause] okay the last step for our template is to use it to relocate your bumper mounting holes so what we're going to do now that we've chopped the rear of the frame off we're going to line this up again with the rear part of the frame we're going to take these two holes mark bump on the template and we're just going to bore right through those they're half inch holes and you're just going to open those up and that's where your bumper is going to go now that we've cut the back of the frame off simple and we're done with the template after this and then we just get back to putting our truck back together okay guys that's a wrap we've got all our modifications out of the way and our chassis zarnow short beds so don't forget we got to take twelve inches out of the front part of the drive shot that's something for a professional driveshaft shop to do it's not something you want to do in your driveway or garage also you need to have the frame welded so it's plenty strong enough if you need to drive it to a welding shop your local professional and have them do it or if you're a good welder go ahead and do the welding yourself at home outside of that all we got to do is put our trucks back together and enjoy our new short beds thanks for watching and don't forget to check us out on Facebook Instagram and subscribe to our YouTube channel for all of our other how-to videos to get your truck looking and driving great

Channel: BROTHERS Truck Parts

Views: 633,100

Keywords: 67-72, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, classic, chevy, chevrolet, gmc, truck, pickup, c10, c20, 1/2 ton, cheyenne, shortbed, frame, shorten, chassis, cut, longbed, conversion, long, bed, short, how to, weld, easy

Id: ZK30C3yWvA4

Length: 14min 59sec (899 seconds)

Published: Tue May 08 2018