Body Swap - Hot Rod Garage Episode 49
Whether you’ve got a love of all things automotive, or the hands-on challenge of collision repair is what drives you, you won’t want to miss out on Lincoln Tech’s “Tech Tips” – part of Motor Trend’s “Hot Rod Garage” web series. Here, in episode 49 of Hot Rod Garage, our hosts, Tony and Lucky, show you how to carry out a body swap on a classic Ford Crown Victoria and a Ford pickup.
Swapping out bodies from two different vehicles might sound complicated, but it gets a lot simpler once you narrow down the kind of body swap you’re performing. Tony’s about to walk you through three different types of body-on-frame construction and show you how the steps to swapping out the bodies changes for each one.
Body Swap on Hot Rod Garage - Episode 49 Transcription
Welcome back to another Lincoln Tech Tip. This episode is all about body swaps. That's where you take the body off one car, and put it on the frame of another car. But that's only possible with body-on-frame construction. There's a few different ways to do it, and you should be familiar with each one.
Which type of body swap should you perform?
The first type of car construction is body-on-frame. That's where there is a separate frame that houses all of the mechanical components, including engine, drivetrain, and suspension, with a separate body bolted on top. Now, this is good for high-load capacity. But overall, rigidity and handling are not the best.
The second design type is unibody construction. Most modern cars are made with a unibody design. That's where the body and frame are integrated together, and there's usually removable sub-frames, front and rear, that house the drivetrain and suspension components. Unibody advantages are high rigidity and lightweight, which deliver good performance, handling, and refinement.
The third design type we're going to talk about are half-frame cars. That's cars like the early Camaros, early Novas, and even our '65 Fury wagon. These cars have the rear suspension bolted into the body. But the front has a sub-frame that starts about midway throughout the car and that supports the front end, the front suspension, and the engine. They're basically half-unibody and half-frame cars. Well, let's get back to the Hot Rod Garage, where we're doing our F-100 and Crown Victoria swap, which are two body-on-frame cars.
(Video transcription provided by Speechpad)