By Tony K
Time and road salt eventually take their toll on our wagons resulting in the dreaded body or frame swap. But other than lots of bolts, wires and fuel lines it’s really not that hard to do. The main concern is to be safe as you will have a lot of metal up in the air and a chassis rolling around to add to the fun.
Body and frame swaps have something very much in common. While they are very different parts of your rig, either one starts at the same place, you are going to have to seperate the two parts. And this is where things can get a bit tricky but if you are careful and use a bit of common sense it is not all that difficult.
It would sure be nice to have a full size auto hoist but like they say neccesity is the mother of invention. As most of us do not have a hoist, once again it is time to think inside the wagon. You not only need the regular tools to seperate things but you aslo need something to lift the body off the frame as well as something to support it once it is up to allow you to roll out the chassis and either move it under a new body that is also in the air or roll the new frame underneath.
-First Things First-
You have to start somewhere and it all starts with pulling bolts. But before you can pull the body mount bolts there is a bit of prep you have to do as the bolts are buried under a lot of interior components, carpet, seats, trim and even rubber caps to seal the floor. But prior to even this I find it easiest to strip off all the parts of the front 
end that are going to get in the way and once this is clear I go ahead and pretty much gut the interior. The last one I took apart only took about 6 hours to prep for removal of the body. This included pulling the fenders and stripping the interior. And just so you don’t think I destroyed everything to get it out in a hurry, everything I pulled out was still usable for the reinstallation.
Having the interior out lightens the load and gives clear access to all of the bolts that need to come off to remove the body. Tip #1 might help at this point, more than likely most of the body bolts are going to be rusted. Do yourself a favor and just cut the bolt heads off….
-Pick it Up, Set it Down-
Once things were loose I picked up the body with 2 hi-lifts, some boat stands, a bunch of blocks and some heavy steel tube. While I don’t feel this is the best way to do this it did work. No matter how you do it, be safe. Did I forget to mention that Eric’s help was invaluable… The more the merrier when it comes to something like this.
Once the donor body was safely blocked, I rolled the old chassis out and rolled my diesel chassis under the new to me body. I felt a lot better once the chassis was back in place, if anything fell it wasn’t going far…. A bit of back and forth with the blocks and through the magic of labor we had the body in place in about 2 hours. I was happy… even if it did take a couple of days to leisurely bolt the body down and put the interior back together.
All in all well worth all the effort.
