78 shortbed stepside 4x4 rebuild...have questions

[78stepside]

well, its been a few months now and i have had terrible luck with finding a donor truck with a good cab.

quick question(s):

what year cabs will work with a 78 truck? early 70s to i think late 80s? not sure what all changed over the years. was there a big differnce in the cab floor between a 2wd truck vs a 4wd truck (autos or manuals)? might have to find a 2wd cab if it will work.

also, i have gone crazy and decided (until reality sets in) to do a nv4500+married np205 setup. i wont even go into this one yet as i am still learning how this is going to work without spending a fortune. questions is, is it even worth trying to find a donor 4spd truck to snatch the steering column, clutch pedal, etc out of or should i just piece this stuff together later?

thanks for the help guys.


p.s. 4th of july weekend is all mine and i am going to sandblast the whole chassis followed by a few coats of eastwoods acrylic chassis black. i will take a few pics of what i have so far.

[zac9898]

im in the middle of pretty much doing what you are wanting to do except i started with a 2wd. I do have extra parts if you need them. i am in utah though. I do know off of the top of my head that i have a clutch pedal assembly. i also have a recently rebuilt 2wd 4spd because i went with the 5 spd i am not going to use it. let me know what you are interested in and ill see what i can dig up.
as for the cabs i think they stayed the same till around 1980 then they changed i ended up using a cab off of a 79 for my 77

[78stepside]

thanks. are you converting to 4wd or just doing a 5spd in your 2wd? not sure how far along you are but i could use all the info you have to mate the 5spd to a BB (guessing you are using an nv trans).

i assume you are doing an auto to manual swap too? i think it would be easier to just buy a 4spd truck with everything already set up so i dont have to do a bunch of extra work and piece together all the manual truck parts (column, pedal, etc.). i will let you know if i end up with a 2wd or an auto cab. might look you up for those parts if thats the case.

any idea what changed in the cabs after 1980?

[78stepside]

im in the middle of pretty much doing what you are wanting to do except i started with a 2wd. I do have extra parts if you need them. i am in utah though. I do know off of the top of my head that i have a clutch pedal assembly. i also have a recently rebuilt 2wd 4spd because i went with the 5 spd i am not going to use it. let me know what you are interested in and ill see what i can dig up.
as for the cabs i think they stayed the same till around 1980 then they changed i ended up using a cab off of a 79 for my 77

just read your post on my other thread. i am going to try to get an nv4500 out of a dodge. hopefully it wont be as much of a pain as your chevy one. do you have any idea what bellhousing will mate up direct to the BB? i dont want to machine one so either i have to fing out who makes an adapter or figure out if the v10 trucks are compatable.


look for me to pick your brain in the near future.

[zac9898]

the truck started out as sb 4spd truck. I decided to keep the truck for a couple of different reasons. it is a cab and chassis setup from dodge that has a 12' flat bed on it. My dad has had the truck longer then me sadly enough. He bought it in 84 i came around in 85. Ever since he bought the truck he wanted it to have a dump. so in 2007 we got the dump installed. I wanted the bb, at this time I was able to get my hands on a 1973 Chrysler imperial in which i took the engine and tranny and sold the car for a demo derby. So in 2008 the truck got a big block. I ended up getting a bell housing out of a 1976 dodge with a 400 from a junk yard in southern utah. Stock bell housing that bolted right up to the 4spd tranny. Then the driver side head gasket blew and we decided to make it 4wd. No big Deal i thought, That was a year ago march. I bought a 1985 w350 thinking that it was all i needed to do the swap. It had a 4spd with a married tcase. Well one of our other dodges tcase died and the truck had it (donor #!) so i robbed that tcase to get the other truck back on the road. I started tearing apart the 77 and discovered rust from the inside out on the rockers and the floors were too far gone. In the mean time i had parted out my donor #1 and recooped my intial investment plus i was able to keep the parts that i needed. In the mean time i noticed a old 74 truck for sale up in slat lake in which the seller claimed it was fuel injected with a 5spd manual tranny. My curiosity got the best of me and I was off to see this creation. well long story short i ended up buying this truck changing my 2wd to 4wd swap plans mid way through because we wanted this tranny in the 77. the 74 had a divorced tcase which is a np205 if i remember correctly.

Thats a little background of the project i am nearing the end of. I am in the process of reassembly. I had the cab sand blasted and painted the new b5 blue that you can get on the 2010 challengers.

As the cabs the only thing i know of for sure is the tranny hump is different and the body line is different for the doors. I am not sure on how the dash is mounted because my donor i didn't take apart.

As far as the steering is concerned that can be a tricky task. Between all of my donor trucks and my keeper trucks i can honestly say none of them had the exact same steering set up. I only have a column for a auto truck because that is what was in the donor with the 5spd. Hopefully this makes sense i started writing it yesterday and had to comeback today and finish.

Let me know if you have any questions. aside from the tranny matting to the engine everything else has gone pretty smoothly.
Thanks
Zac

[zac9898]

oh i didn't answer your question about the bell housing. I would look into Lakewood and see what they offer for a what i think is a what they call a scatter proof bell housing. they seem pretty universal. the most important thing is the length of the input shaft of the tranny i would try to find something that is very close to the same length of the stock one. It is possible to machine the parts necessary to make anything work for your big block.
here is the link that i found when i was looking for the bell housings

http://www.lakewoodindustries.com/MM...ypes&brandID=5

[USN78W150]

cabs

Starting in 1981, the roof cap was different, also. It is squared off across the rear of the roof. Of course that is also the year that the new dash came out as well.