now the fun and frustration begins.. you can tell in the last pictures I am working out of a barn. Not that this van or process would fit in a garage, but after having concrete at my previous houses, I am over the dirt floors and old horse smell. So I have no lift, no solid substrate for easy rolling around of equipment or any of that silly stuff. So I used some of my vehicle extrication training to figure out how to do this whole body swap thing, with cribbing as my jack stands/lift. Now as a note of caution, this is not safe with the height I had to lift. I think it's 3-4' high with 2' cribbing, so I went about the process slowly and carefully like my life depended on it. haha. only dropped the body once or twice while lifting
I started lifting the body and placing blocks/cribbing to capture progress. When the body was going to clear the engine and rear tires, I built another stack of cribbing that would clear the chassis width to roll out. I used a 4x4 post which was not strong enough, to bridge the span between those blocks. Any shock loading may have snapped it, so all the movement had to be smooth, safety note: no body parts between wood and body when placing cribbing, push it into place with another piece of cribbing, never sitting, always kneel or crouch to move quickly if needed. But it worked, I added a middle pillar and bottle jack to support the 4x4 while waiting and removing the other body. The rear of the body can be lifted between the frame rails if you remove the hitch and rear bumper, with a block of wood and a hi lift you can lift the back very quickly.