I'd like to find out what changes dimensionally when putting a newer (longer) transmission in a first gen.
1. How much further back is the rear trans mount (exactly if possible)
2. How much do I need to shorten the rear driveshaft?
3. How much longer does the front driveshaft need to be.
4. Are there any driveshafts that fit this swap without any, or maybe minimal modifications?

Any info/ tricks in doing a trans swap would be helpful.

 

This should get you started, trans lengths from Marlin in far right column.
https://www.marlincrawler.com/tech/t...ar-ratio-chart

Driveline mods will also depend on your lift, if any. You can just do some simple triangle calcs by measuring current driveline length, vert distance flange to flange, and knowing the change in trans length to calc your new driveline length. Or go the better option and measure flange to flange once the new trans is in, then you take a lot of chance of error out.

 

Please give the search a try, this has been covered several times

 

Yeah but the information is scattered throughout the forums. If it's beens asked several times it's information quite a few people are looking for. Therefore..... maybe make a stickey or a post in the how to section.
I just don't have a lot of time on on my hands to swim through page after page of information and misinformation.

 

I will say that for all the times this question gets asked, and for all of us who seem to have "knowledge" of how it's done (we repeat the same thing...shorter rear shaft, longer front, move back the cross member), there is very little information on actually doing it. People (myself included) jump in and say "here's what I've heard you're supposed to do", but the people who have actually done it and can give you specific "been there done that" information are few and far between apparently.

dropzone has a great sticky on all sorts of common and less common mods. Maybe someday the miracle of the internet will produce a forum with a tech section that has a standard guideline for title, and can be easily organized in different ways, depending on what you're looking for (think Amazon or something else..."filter by" or click certain categories to exclude all other categories from your search, etc), which has writeups on this stuff.

It's been attempted in some form or another before, but because so much of it depends on users like us actually posting in that section, under a searchable title...it never seems to work very well. Which is why I try to make my titles when I ask questions something that somebody might enter as search terms. Rather than starting a thread with the title "I have a question". Who the hell could know what's in that thread through a search??

I've definitely done some swaps and projects and not documented it.

 

Some basic things that would help you in your quest for answers that you left out
-is your truck a long or short bed
-do you have a lift on it

To tell you that you need to shorten your rear drive shaft 4 " and than find out you pUT 63" chevy springs on your truck and didn't get them centered correctly (it happens) and have you come back and say you have no splines visible in your driveshaft because it needed to 3" shorter is why it won't be in a sticky.

 

Yeah we don't have as much fun around here as they do on Pirate, laughing and swearing at people and telling them how dumb they are because they didn't do their own fact-checking
We're a little more nice.