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1958 buick onto 1993 buick frame/floor

6K views 5 replies 5 participants last post by  camatkins 
#1 ·
I am looking for others "best practices" or mistakes to avoid in aiding me in a frame and floor swap. I have a 1958 Buick Special rag and it needs a floor. I picked up a 1958 Buick Special 2dr. hardtop. Its rough but very solid. I will remove the floor fully for the rag top but don't want to waste the 2 door body. I picked up a 1993 Roadmaster to put the body onto. I will use the floor and frame stretching both to match the wheel base of the 58. I know that car mags have run tech articles on projects of diff. makes and years but the same basic switch. Does anyone know of any or have you tackled the same sort of project and can give some tips to help me along. I also have a 124" wheel base centurion that could donate its frame/floor but then would be back to old parts but a 455 powered 58 Buick.
 
#3 ·
There is a guy over at Chevytalk that did something similar with a 60 Impala.

He used an earlier Caprice/Impala frame as the wheelbase was closer to the 59/60 cars (within an inch).

Used the floor from the later car and grafted it to the 60, and from what I gathered, the frame of the Caprice fit just fine inside of the rockers of the 60.

58-64 Full size GM all have similarities somewhere, so even if the Buick is not an X-frame (I don't know), many of the dimensions would be the same as the Chevy.

Not sure which one of these early BOPC cars had an X-frame that also had beams just inside the rockers as well. Sort of a perimeter frame with an X in the middle.
 
#5 ·
Being the lazy guy that I am, I would not touch the floor in the 2DHT and locate a frame for it. I would then order up the sheet metal and make a new floor for the Rag. Cutting out a floor, moving it to another car and then locating/building a floor to replace the one I removed seems like a lot more work to me. Been there:done that a few times.

Trees
 
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