It’s no secret that the 1967-72 Ford F-100 is becoming the hot ticket in the vintage truck market nowadays. That means supplies of the coveted short bed model are drying up and prices of those restorable trucks are hitting the stratosphere.
The silver lining here though, is the 1967-72 Ford F-100 short box’s popularity hasn’t had the same impact on the long box variant (yet).
And with this handy long bed-to-short bed frame shortening kit from Classic Performance, with a little elbow grease you can get the F-100 small bed look without the small bed premium.
The kit takes all of the homework out of the critical frame measurement side. You get an easy set of steel templates that’ll show you the cutting marks and where to drill the right holes. Then you use the laser-cut C-channel sections included with the kit to reattach and reinforce the shortened frame joint.
Classic Performance includes hardware so you can bolt-together the sections, but it recommends welding the pieces together for additional long-term structural rigidity.
You can find the kit under part number CLP-6772LBFSK at SummitRacing.com.
If you’ve got a little frame and body know-how and are handy with a welder, then the frame conversion isn’t that difficult, either. In fact, the folks from Classic Performance say you can do the job in an afternoon with just a drill, saw, and basic hand tools. (The frame part anyway, you’ll still need to source a 1967-72 short cargo box to plop onto it, as well as the requisite shorter driveline parts, brake lines, etc.)
As proof, they gave a kit to Classic Performance Trucks Magazine for a Ford F-100 long bed project truck, and its staff created a handy walkthrough on exactly how you do it.
Click here for Part 1 of the frame conversion article from Classic Truck Performance Magazine, and you can see the install action unfold in the video below too:
Will this work on a 79 f150 ?