Swapping grille and hood

Looking forward to a possible hood and grille swap. If I were to purchase a '77 or '78 truck, and want to swap to the '79/'80 non-birdbath hood and quad headlight grille, are those the only two things I need to swap? Or do I need to swap hood latch, or anything else? Thank you.

You will have to swap the valence panel below the grill for turn signals. I am pretty sure you have to swap radiator supports because of the headlight bucket arrangement as well.

The quad headlight stuff bolts on so you could potentially make that work.

you also need to swap panel between hood and windshield

I've heard a lot of people say that the cowl panel is different between rain catchers and flat hoods but I'm not sure I believe it. If ya can find a hood, ya can find a cowl panel and they're usually pretty cheap. Would ya believe I scored a flat hood for $30 a couple months ago?

77 and 78 were the only years for turn sigs in the grille so ya need a lower valance with turn sigs from any other tin grille. There are minor differences but I want to say that's all about the screw holes along the bottom edge of the grille. Maybe a bit of a profile difference in the same area but not enough to be a show stopper.

Rad supports are year range specific. In this scenario, 79 and 80 are the only ones stamped and punched to accept the quad headlight setup. One cool thing is that dual and quad use the same support. Single buckets are spot welded on, the quad piece bolts on and yes you can hack up an earlier one and make it work but you'll only get 3 of the 4 mounting holes for the quad buckets.

The other thing you need is an adapter pigtail for the head lights. 79 / 80 used the same under hood wiring harness but different pigtails based on dual / quad head lights. When ya grab the rad support with buckets, cut the connector off the harness and splice it in to your older harness. Ya'll probably need to extend the turn sig wires as well.

One potential ugly in laying hands on the parts is the LRE guys. Quad setups are kinda hard to find and often get priced up because people sinking money it to a Red resto will pay up. Every once in a while you can stumble across a complete set up for cheap. The one below was on craigs for like $300 last summer. Ya can see the repairs if ya look close but for the coin, it would be a no brainer. Push comes to shove you can splice a couple rad supports together and I plan on doing that with a couple of my spares when get I get my welding skills together. Bottom edge from an earlier hacked and bent support that's mostly rust free. Top part from a 79 / 80 that wasted along the bottom.

if you were closer I'd make you a deal on a flat hood. Just scored a free Bird Bath for mine.

RWG, thanks for the info! I do remember now that the lower valance is different too. Didn't realize that much difference in the buckets and mounting. The pigtails I figured I'd still be able to find new, but grabbing used would be good just in case. I have a grille already, the other stuff is tougher, especially hood because of weight, as basketcase mentioned. We'll see what happens. I'm shopping 2wd's (I already have a W150) and if the right option comes up in a '77/78 I might buy it and swap the front to the preferred hood and grille. I like the earlier ones fine, but prefer the later ones.

Thanks all.

I think the killer on shipping a hood would be the size. Road freight tariffs are about density so lighter stuff that takes up space costs more that small heavy stuff. There's also the hassle of packaging. I've heard some people have shipped them greyhound but don't have detail on that. I did have a rad supt shipped to me greyhound last year and it worked out great. Like $100 from AZ to PA but the online tracking sucked. I kept the box because I ended up buying like 4 of them while scrambling to get one for my RC. As in: hit me up when ya need one.

My LRE and RC both have the quad setup. My frakenram is titled as 77 with a 77 grille but I'm thinking it's mostly a 79. Well, some of it is a 79. Been thinking about swapping it over to a quad set up now that I have the extras because it already has the flat hood and one of the support mounts rotted away. Kinda looks outta place when parked with the others.

I got a '69 300 trunk lid from Louisiana about 15 years ago thru Greyhound. Was around $75. Then they closed the local bus terminal. I just shipped a tailgate to Tennessee for $82 , was gonna be $103 to Florida.

Dang RWG, stop teasing with those pics!

I tried to find a reasonably nearby bus station recently because I was looking at a NOS fender, and struck out. We used to have a Greyhound in Melbourne that I could've had a package shipped to, but not anymore.

I had that problem getting a rad supt out of Minnesota. Bus stations they had but nearest one that handled packages was a couple hundred miles or more. Next best choice was FedEx freight but like twice what Greyhound would have been and it had to go on a pallet. The seller had 2 of them and one priced dirt cheap so I bought them both to make the numbers work.

Me thinks someone wants to corner the market!

It wasn't plan A but ya know how these things go sometimes.

70s Dodge truck rad supports that aren't rusted to hell are a generally hard find, the quad headlight ones even more so because only a 2 year run. When the quest began in earnest I passed on a couple nice ones that I could have day tripped to pick up because I thought they were priced way too high. I ended up paying at least that much for the others when the shipping got factored in. The cost of the "collection" likely exceeded what I could have paid somebody to stitch a couple bad but right year and good but wrong year ones together. Ended up making a deal to buy some then found ones that were both better and cheaper before the first deal was done. Couldn't pass up another and didn't want to be a dick to the seller of the deal in progress.

The over / under came down to some sound advise from a 3rd party - it ain't like prices for these things is gonna come down. Have you seen some of the crazy numbers people are getting for the grilles? A little bit of my labor to clean up a couple issues and blast / prime them and a few years sitting in the basement could net a bit of a profit. Assuming they don't start repoping them.