- 1951 Chevy S10 Suburban Panel Truck

1951 Chevy Suburban Panel Truck

We have a helluva treat for you my fellow readers and car nuts. We managed to pick up while on a vacation in Texas, a 1951 Chevy Suburban panel truck. This truck was on my saved list on facebook marketplace for some time during our plans to go to Texas. My plan was to do some searching for car parts that I either need for current projects or can use for future projects and if something presents itself, a whole vehicle will be picked up.

We made our way from Galveston up to Houston after the tourist/vacation part of our trip was done. It was here, just outside of Houston, where this truck was located. After looking the truck over and getting the story behind it, we negotiated the price down from the original $1k price it was listed at to $800. Now while the truck was paid for and ours, we didn't have any means to pick this truck up as we were on vacation and the truck we rented did not have a class 3 hitch that could pull a car trailer. We would have to come back later to pick this truck up when we could rent the more powerful 3/4 ton diesel truck that we typically rent when we go to haul a car.

Shot of 51 Chevy at shop where we bought it.

After getting the truck back to the house it sat for a while, only being worked on to the tune of removing the old brake hardware so the truck can be easily rolled around and into the yard from its old parking spot along the driveway. From here I decided to take on another body swap project, incorporating the old 2000 S10 truck we had. That truck was damaged by a tree that smashed the bed. Even though the truck was still drivable, it was unsightly. Since trying to restore the 51 would be an expensive and difficult endeavor due to the amount of degradation, I decided to take on another body swap project similar to Truckstang. It would involve stripping the S10 down to just the rolling chassis, save for the firewall, dash, and floor. The 51 Chevy would be separated from the frame, lifting the body free to remove the frame and prep the underside of the body in preparation for the grafting of the two bodies.

With the 51 Chevy body supported and cut out on the bottom, I can begin the grafting process. Further trimming of metal and constant fitting of the bodies went on until I was able to get the old body to sit nicely enough over the cut up remnants of the S10 chassis. From there I was able to start welding things together to fully fuse the two bodies together to create what would be known as the 51 Chevy S10 truck.

With the 51 body finally one with the S10 chassis, I can start putting body panels back on. The doors, side and rear have to go on. The fenders have to go on. The hood will have to be modified to fit around the remnants of the S10 firewall. I will also have to figure out how to put the rusty grille on around the front of the S10 where the frame rails extend out ahead of the 51 body. With the fitting of the hood and grille I will also fit the S10 radiator, which will involve fabricating a core support to hold the rad in place in a new position to allow for the 51 body panels to go in place.

With the body reassembled the next move is getting the interior together. I take a moment to get the dash fixed up to accommodate the S10 gauge cluster by cutting out the metal to fit the gauge cluster. With the gauge cluster in I get the HVAC box reinstalled along with fabricating a central panel for the HVAC control panel, a radio and USB/12v power receptacles. I also take a moment to rig up a crude method to "wind" up the windows on the doors using old ratchet straps. I also fabricate crude door latches using miscellaneous hardware as well. I even get the old S10 bucket seats back in place, using the original seat mounts that are present on what is still the S10 floor. I top off the interior with some strip lights around the top of the shell to help light up the interior when I desire.

With the interior pretty much complete enough to work for us during a drive, I turned my attention to the exterior once again. Things like the headlights, taillights, turn signals all needed to be done. Since we still kept the wiring from the original S10, I was able to wire in our new lights to the light wiring. I went with H4 headlight housings in place of the old sealed beam lights and some universal turn signal lights for the front. For the rear I used some bullet style taillights that have taillight and turn signal functions. I had to fabricate brackets to mount these fixtures in the rear effectively. I get the electric fan installed on the radiator as well. I even took a moment to hook up the license plate light as well. I also add simple door handles on the doors along with slide latches to secure the doors on the outside. I even take a moment to cut a hole to set up an access port for the fuel filler tube and fuel cap. Back at the rear I add door latches to the two hatch doors to secure them in the closed position as tightly as possible. As for the broken windows I utilize Lexan plastic glass glued in place and sealed up. Even though the windshield is safety glass that is strong enough to take the impact of an errant piece of rock, for right now the main focus was to get some form of window installed to help in sealing the interior of the truck from wind and rain that could ruin the gauge cluster and other S10 related electrical hardware in the dash. Lastly, I took a moment to install a media player radio to take care of that piece of incomplete business. With all these things done, I can take the truck for a test drive.

After the successful test drive I only had a few small grievances against the build. The first one was the position of the S10 seats relative to the 51 Chevy dash. The dash sits higher than the dash on the S10 truck, so with the seats in their original position, even a tall person like myself struggles to see over the dash and safely ahead on the road. The other problem is the rear hatches, which understandably do not seal well nor sit tightly due to the crude door latches that are used to hold them together. There was also the matter of the roof of the truck being almost separated from the rest of the body due to rust. With no real solution to this problem, the only option was to weld in narrow strips of sheet metal over the rusted seams to essentially stitch the roof back to the rest of the body. It looks like crap but then again, this whole truck has that wastelander Mad Max desert rat rod kind of look going for it. Then there is the matter of the floor in the back, or the lack of. After taking a bit of a hiatus from this project, I come back to it and address all these things. I fabricate raised seat mounts that allow me to bolt the S10 seats to them at a higher position. The seat mounts use the mounting points on the floor while allowing the seats to bolt down without any modifications to the floor or the seats. While I didn't do anything about the hatch doors, I did address the floor. Since the floor consisted of a series of boards spaced with metal dividers that are bolted to cross bars on the 51 body, I had only two options. I could either get the dimensions of the three different boards used on this truck, along with replacement metal divider pieces, or cut and trim a piece of 4x8 pressure treated plywood to fit over the opening. I went with the latter. I added some sheet metal to the left and right sides to fill the openings between the rear fenders and the rear of the cab area and the areas going back to the rear hatches. This gave me the 4x8 spacing that allowed for the plywood to sit nicely. To try and maintain some level or originality, I retained the divider strips by putting the strips on top of the plywood before installing the carriage bolts that hold the plywood down to the cross bars on the 51 body. With this, the floor has the appearance from a distance of the wood floor that would've been in this truck originally.