Well you sure are ambitious! Look forward to following your build.
Are you going to put the engine in the bed, or up front?

FWIW, I have the 87 3.9 engine out of mine. Runs fine, with 89000 actual miles. Ive offered it and the transmission up for free, and no talkers in the first gen section.
Had a guy tell me, the only thing more rare then high performance parts for a 3.9 is people wanting them..... Thats one reason I swapped to a 5.9.

 

Sounds like a plan. Thanks!

 

Engine up front, trans out back. Beyond that, everything's in limbo on what goes where.

 

Took long enough, but things are finally starting to move again. Just received a set of Dobberton front and rear adapters, and I'm waiting on a front and rear suspension from a 2003 Corvette to arrive. Supposedly will be in next week. Once they get in, and I remove a few parts that won't be on the finished product, they go to the shop building my frame. I don't mind saying that if nothing had been started by May 1, I was going to cancel this and find something new that I could build without depending on someone else to do work.

At the rate I'm going, one of my kids will have a nice truck.

 

I removed the stuff from the suspension that I won't be using. The stuff I'm using, along with the Dobberton adapters, was dropped off by the shop today. Still no scheduled start date, as they are still having manpower issues.

 

Long time no see. I don't use the internet much these days but it's way too cold out there to do much else. That being said, I have no idea how often I'll be back. My project is still ongoing, and the shop has finally started on the new frame. We're not using the Dobberton adapters now. The shop I'm using has experience building with Corvette suspension systems and will be building the frame to attach the cradles directly. For anyone who wants to do similar, the factory frame is a rather crappy "2 C-channels welded together" 2x4 box frame for the front half, then a 5 inch C channel for the back half, so the whole thing will be fine if you used all 2x4 box. I don't intend to haul loads though, so if you want to retain hauling ability you might want to use 2x5 or 2x6 box for the back half.

We decided to abandon the rear trans as the torque tube will require too much intrusion into the cab. I'd have to cut the center of the floor out front to back to make it fit. With an engine trans and driveshaft I just have to widen the tunnel a bit up front. Not to mention, I did a lot of reading up on the torque tube setup and they have enough problems with them stock. I'd have to change the length on it and that's just way more trouble than I'm interested in doing. It does mean I have to find a way to shift weight rearward as one of the goals is a 50/50 weight balance. I now have a 5th gen Camaro rear diff at the shop.

Since my last post, my brother has completed his Camaro with a supercharged LS-based 416 using an iron 6.0 block and a Kenne Bell Mammoth supercharger on top. He dynoed at 800HP and is probably at about 4300lbs, and while it's fun it's also a real handful to drive on the street and nerve wracking when there's a cop behind you at a street light. Now I'm shooting for around 600HP. I'm going to use an 8HP transmission behind whatever engine I finally settle on. I want this to be a fun to drive truck, not something that takes a lot of work to drive when not on the track.

I've also decided to ditch the 6.5ft bed for a crewcab 5ft bed. This will shorten the truck by a foot and a bit and knock close to 100lbs off the total weight. It should give it a more balanced appearance as well, more like a Chevy short wide square body vs a long bed. It will be plenty for me as I have another truck for carrying crap. The most this truck will carry is some groceries, or perhaps a couple of suitcases.

Other body work will be needed. Something I didn't expect was how far out the tires stick out. While the track width of the Corvette is within 0.1 inches of the Dakota, the outside wheel to outside wheel measurements are a couple of inches wider due to the wider tires on a Corvette. The truck will be a lot lower (yet will still have sufficient clearance for speed bumps) which puts the fenders right into the tires. And, it looks like that is how it is stock except the body sits so much higher than the tires it's not an issue. I'll have to flare the front and rear fenderwells to make the tires fit correctly. We could have narrowed the cradles, but it would have complicated steering to do so. I would have needed a shorter rack, custom mounts, and the steering shaft would have needed a bunch of joints vs the nearly straight shot if has now. It kinda sucks because it means I have to use Corvette wheels instead of the ones I wanted to use.

Anyway, on to the good stuff. These pictures are about a month old, and I hope to get more in a few weeks when I can get back down there again. All this is also mockup stage, nothing's more than tack welded in these pictures.