The 1976 Chevy LUV Toyota Truck Frame Swap
The Chevy LUV is a truck that has sat in our ranks for quite a while, being a test platform for a number of different setups that I thought of throughout the years. This truck has had a diesel powerplant in it in two different versions, its had its original powerplant rebuilt and dropped back in for a short while. It's had an old S10 2.8L powerplant installed. It's had a Ford 2.3L/C3 automatic powerplant dropped in. I even played with the idea of putting the old EV hardware from the Robo-car in this truck as well. As time went by, parts for this truck have become harder and harder to find, making this truck become more impractical to have in its current state. Conveniently, I found the truck frame that made up the Toyota Chicken Truck has the same wheelbase as the LUV. Since the bed on the TCT was rotted, it was of no use in the chicken coop format. Recent work had me take the Toyota cab and mount it on a standalone foundation as a chicken coop, leaving the frame open and free for me to use for a frame swap project. The LUV truck was stripped of most of the EV hardware, save the motor/transmission. I'll remove that when the old LUV frame is freed up, since all I'll have to do is lift it easily off the frame without having to work around the truck body. Removing the bed and cab from the frame was easy as its only a few bolts for either one.
After removing the cab from this frame, the frame was dragged and pushed into position to park it next to the LUV to have it ready for the swapping of the LUV body over to the new used frame.
Some fabrication had to be done in places in order to get mounting points together between the cab and the Toyota frame. I had to weld new mounting points on the frame rail for the bed and drill new points in the floor of the cab and use heavy wide washers to apply bolts through the cab floor into the new mounting points on the Yota frame. I took care to make sure the gaps between the bed and cab were close enough even with the wheelbase of the Yota frame and create the mounts for the front bumper to keep things as close to "original" as possible in the new configuration. The last thing I did was reinstall the Toyota 5spd transmission that was in the truck from the beginning, along with its driveshaft. The project that I have planned for this oddball truck will be unique to say the least.
The plan that I have for this truck is a unique one. Since we've been getting into the powersports/small engine genre with different gokarts and riding lawn mowers/tractors, my interest had been piqued with videos on people repowering vehicles with small engines, whether the common Predator 212 or 420 and 670 engines, or even the uncommon Chinese diesel engines. This idea was interesting enough that I decided to take on a version of this project with this odd little truck not so much to see how well it can handle in the streets but to create something that can be a conversation piece for car shows and to be a platform to support a modified engine crane in the bed and serve as a crane truck around the yard for lifting engines or other similar heavy items without the need for the tractor all the time. Stay tuned for that project soon.
