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I also solved the floor hole pattern issue. I put my sawsall to my 1986 Trooper parts truck and nabbed this handy dandy shifter hump sheetmetal piece. Now I can use it to mark my Luvs floor before cutting the hole and I can remove and transfer the rear shifter hump piece (it's only spot welded on with seam sealer gooped around it) to the newly cut Luv floor pan allowing me to use the Trooper shift boot and all. Should look great when done!

I cut the current transmission cross member out today, I used a cut off wheel and a dremel in the tight spots to cut the welds off at the flanges nice and clean. I slid the cross member back and it slid back far enough to align with the rear trans mount location on the 5 speed, it looks like it will bolt up right there, all I'd have to do is weld some extensions to the cut off flange ends to make brackets to bolt it in (rather than weld it in so it's removable). I am also thinking about cutting through the torsion bar holes so that they are not in the way of removing it. If I do that I'll reinforce the cut areas with some welded in steel to shore them up.

Does anyone think there might be problems with this plan?

I would and will strongly suggest you build a removable cross-member cause if by any misfortune you should have to pull the trans you wont get it out without pulling the cab. I looked at this allot when i built mine.

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1978 pro street step/side 455Buick, 4sp,4.11s, 31/18.5s

Yes, it will be removable, I plan to weld tabs on the frame rails and add bolt on features to the ends of the newly cut away cross member. I'm also going to cut away the areas above the torsion bar holes and then weld in "U" shaped steel straps to reinforce them which will allow the new crossmember design to drop away without pulling the torsion bars once the side end flange bolts are removed.

Question.....How do I adjust the E-brake cable now that the mount/adjuster slot is going to be so much closer? And tips?

Well it's finally ready to go, the new cross member is now fabbed and welded so that it's all removable (thanks to my buddy Ron who welded them up for me - He Did a REALLY nice job!).

We went with two cross members, one in the Trooper location and one at the tail shaft as the Luv used. The forward cross member was cut and dropped a couple inches, bracket ends added to allow it to bolt in, then rewelded in a similar fasion as the example posted by TJ White earlier on this thread (thanks for that idea, worked great!). The final hieght was determined by measuring the transmission mount from the frame to the ground then adjusting to the new location while the tail shaft was on a jackstand at ride hieght. The Trooper skid plate was then cut, shortened, and welded back together so that it now fits the new location and looks stock.

The second rearward one was totally fabbed from steel rectangular tube stock, it wasn't really needed but it doesn't hurt anything and allows for a spot to hold the E-brake anchor points which were removed from the original cross member and welded to the new one, they are now a couple inches further back than original but still allow for enough of the adjuster bolt adjustment to hold the cables tight. It is also bolt in and removable. I'll be pulling it all off for fresh black paint before bolting it all in for good.

Now I can start bolting up all the drive lines and finish the running gear install. Next step will be adding the body back to the frame after paint.....Yah!

man that thing looks great! and good plan going with the extra xmember cant hurt anything to have a little bit of extra support down thereim sure that truck will be a lot more pleasant to drive on the highway with the 5 speed.
really clean setup you have going there..
only thing that i thought was weird is that the shop gave you a g200 head and the wrong flywheel and just happened to have the right ones "sitting around" when you came asking for them, bit fishy but you got your parts and got er done

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Luvless
1980 Mikado-Sold.

1993 Lexus SC400 my Daily
2004 Yamaha WR250F my new love in life
2016 Toyota Camry my girls ride

Thanks! I'm trying! It's just going to be a daily driver/shop truck but sometimes I get carried away. At least it should end up being reliable



Yea, funny isn't it? Especially after they went to great lengths explaining to me that no such part was ever made or used and that I must be remembering incorrectly LOL! Anyway, it's all good now.

In case anyone finds this thread in the future and wants to try this I took some more photos of my cross member setup and have all the dimensions if needed.


Here is the rear cross member with the modified Trooper skidplate (before I painted them)

Some more, one showing a stock Trooper skid plate next to the newly modified one

Here is the Forward cross member (already painted with Zero Rust Primer) which is the Trooper unit that's been modified to fit the Luv frame width. Although the side plates appear to be flimsy they are quite solid with the under wrapped welded plate ends. I may add a small piece of gusset tube stock on the inside corners but it'll really be a bit of overkill, they don't flex at all.

Here are all 3 modified pieces laid out loosely how they go. Next step was painting them with black chassis black paint and bolting them back on. Everything went in smoothly and all lines up, feels solid, and fits nice and snug.

finally some pics of what to do
i may need to do this myself soon if i pick up a 510 project im looking into

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Luvless
1980 Mikado-Sold.

1993 Lexus SC400 my Daily
2004 Yamaha WR250F my new love in life
2016 Toyota Camry my girls ride

One other thing I noticed while installing the cab over the new 5 speed. If you have removed your cab as I did and you don't cut the new hole in the floor hump for the new rearward location of the 4 wheel drive shifter before installing the cab, the cab will not to sit down onto the frame. Not a huge deal, but I didn't bother looking at the underside of the floor before starting my cut, basically because I looked at the pics posted at the beginning of this thread by another member and the underside looked clean and open. However, my truck still has all of it's original fuel lines which are routed on the floor of the cab front to back (there are 3-4 of them in tandom) and you guessed it, they run right accross where you need to make the hole. First of all I didn't plan on permanantly removing them (now I need to make other plans), and second of all my sheet metal air nibbler wouldn't go through them. Red Arrow points to the area the fuel lines pass through.

Just a heads up for anyone else doing the swap.