How hard is a body swap on a E-350 5.4?

[225]

My buddy is selling me a van, it's a rust bucket. BUT, it's 4WD. And pretty much pimp.

I'm sure I can find a van body for cheap. Especially since Chris is right down the street from me.

 

[Corneilius]

You'd probably want to find a matching year/body/engine van....there are many little "Van Mysteries" where things changed from year to year. Ive seen plugs that are the same connector, but pinned differently for instance....Would likely be easier to swap the transmission fuel tank and axles onto a clean donor

 

[broncobowsher]

Depends a lot on how close of a match you can find. You might need to roll the dash out of the old truck as well and swap that over. Just like how they are built, the dash goes in and out as a whole. That should clear up any wiring mismatch. The hard part is how do you plan to get 2 vans seperated at once? You pretty much need a shop with 2 hoists and a lot of open floor space. It is amazing how much floor space a partially disassembled vehicle takes up, and you are doing it double. Presuming the plan is to drop the rusty shell onto the donor chassis and sell for scrap. Scrap is the better idea then trying to make it running and sell as a driver. At that point you have mixed VINs on body and chassis. As long as you have the paperwork for both vehicles, you are good. Sell the crusty turd and it gets reported stolen or something evil, that VIN is partially attached to what you own. Several years from now, when going through a DMV inspection moving into a different state, or whatever currently unforeseeable event causes your van to get a thorough inspection and they find a VIN off a stolen vehicle there gets to be a whole lot of splaining to do.

Swapping just the 4WD parts over is probably the better way to do it.

 

[225]

You'd probably want to find a matching year/body/engine van....there are many little "Van Mysteries" where things changed from year to year. Ive seen plugs that are the same connector, but pinned differently for instance....Would likely be easier to swap the transmission fuel tank and axles onto a clean donor

That sounds like a better idea.

Depends a lot on how close of a match you can find. You might need to roll the dash out of the old truck as well and swap that over. Just like how they are built, the dash goes in and out as a whole. That should clear up any wiring mismatch. The hard part is how do you plan to get 2 vans seperated at once? You pretty much need a shop with 2 hoists and a lot of open floor space. It is amazing how much floor space a partially disassembled vehicle takes up, and you are doing it double. Presuming the plan is to drop the rusty shell onto the donor chassis and sell for scrap. Scrap is the better idea then trying to make it running and sell as a driver. At that point you have mixed VINs on body and chassis. As long as you have the paperwork for both vehicles, you are good. Sell the crusty turd and it gets reported stolen or something evil, that VIN is partially attached to what you own. Several years from now, when going through a DMV inspection moving into a different state, or whatever currently unforeseeable event causes your van to get a thorough inspection and they find a VIN off a stolen vehicle there gets to be a whole lot of splaining to do.

Swapping just the 4WD parts over is probably the better way to do it.

That's probably what I'll do. It sounds a lot better. The van I'm buying has a brand new re-man Jasper engine in it. I'll just pull that too and hold on to it.

Ideally, I would like a conversion type van to pull out the crap out and make it a moto hauler. Those usually come cheap becuase they interiors are crap after a while, but still have low mileage. And since I'll be gutting the interior, and putting in Toyota Sienna seats in, it won't matter.

Thanks for the tips.

 

[Chuxideas]

It really shouldn't be that bad. Iv done very nearly this very thing in my drive way with jacks. Also have a friend how took EB body off and then mounted a RB and shortened the frame. I would recommend same years but in the end you would have both full wiring harness. In my case the were same years 1998 those one a V10 and one a 7.3. All that being said it wasn't bad but a whole lot of work!!!


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[Corneilius]

That sounds like a better idea.

Ideally, I would like a conversion type van to pull out the crap out and make it a moto hauler. Those usually come cheap becuase they interiors are crap after a while, but still have low mileage. And since I'll be gutting the interior, and putting in Toyota Sienna seats in, it won't matter.

Thanks for the tips.

Preaching to the Choir, check out my build link in my sig

 

[GNTY]

Definitely if your going to do it buy matching rigs unless you plan on gutting the original down to a shell and installing everything to the new "shell". I've pulled 3 bodies now and done a few 4x conversions, i think i'd do body swap before swapping 4x parts.