narrowing track width of 73-87 ifs 7 inches

My neighbor has a 49 3/4 ton longbed chevy, and he wants me to build a chassis for it. He has a 73-87 crossmember and arms. The track width of it needs to be narrowed 7 inches for the wheels to tuck into the fenders. I've seen a crossmember sectioned a few inches and the center link sectioned the same amount and then sleeved with plug welds. I wanted to section the width of the crossmember and center link 3 inches. Then I wanted to build arms to narrow the c-arm geometry 2 inches, and then trim down the tie rods to adjust those in 2 inches as well. That would remove... 2- 3 -2... 7 inches. Once i have the front geometry narrowed, I would go ahead and build new frame rails out of 2x4 3/16 wall to weld the crossmember to. It seems theoretical to me.

Any opinions on this would be cool.

www.finalfab.com

see if he'd buy an s-10 frame for you to use. they can be had for cheap and i heard they work perfect for these old trucks. hack off the front clip and go from there....sounds like a ton of work to do it the way youre thinking. i think id look into that option, if i were you....thats just my opinion. serch around on some of the hot rod forums, there tons of info on this.

I dont want to do a "clip" installation. The s-10's work great with a bracket kit you can buy... It all bolts on! You just have to find an extended cab frame for it!

I am not worried about the ton of work... Its the custom look im going for.

I hope you're also looking for fucked up steering geometry and exaggerated toe changes when narrowing the center link and control arms/tie rods... think about it. Do the S-10 clip.

if you equally narrowed each component, why would it affect geometry? I have seen plenty of people narrow control arms and tie rods and it still drives well.

As a matter of fact, if custom did a 63 suburban and they narrowed the control arms and tie rods nearly 2 inches on each side to tuck 22's or 24's up into the hood. Its on www.ifcustom.com under the construction pics- marissas 63 burban.

and they sell narrowed control arms for camaro/nova clips. If it screwed somthin up, how would they be able to sell somthin like that.