Tailgate to barn doors

[Hipster]

A Lot of cutting, then weld in cover filler plates. Then cutting in Hinge attach points. And cut and fill and weld in center latch points. Which were factory built in a jig fixture, to hold all attachments in place. If your hinge attachments are an 1/8 of inch off angle your door center alignments are out. The door strikers will probably not latch or drag when closing.
This not to say it's not possible, but full knowledge that it is labor intensive, and some assembly accuracy is required.
Are you sure that the labor / repairs, invested in your current body style be greater savings in downtime, labor, money, and risk.
I have owned both body styles, and currently have a Tahoe with some performance options.
If you decide to go forward please share some photos. Good luck.

Nobody that's said they can do this before has ever come back and posted pics. Once you start cutting and scabbing stuff together you get to a point of no return and the old stuff won't go back on either.

 

[yevgenievich]

On earlier square bodies it was a straight forward procedure as rear body frames had provisions for both, but later year squarebodies and newer it gets complicated very quickly.

 

[HotWheelsBurban]

On earlier square bodies it was a straight forward procedure as rear body frames had provisions for both, but later year squarebodies and newer it gets complicated very quickly.

Agreed. I've had square body Burbs with tailgates, and my last one was barn doors. The nutserts are in the pillars, under the trim pieces where the window goes into.

 

[SUBURBAN5]

Looking for a little insight from some of the experts out there on this, I have a 1992 suburban that I picked up a while back for a whopping 400$, with 106,000 miles, it's a great runner and driver, I use it as a daily, but it has a bit of rot in the rear and it's causing me issues with the tailgate, and I prefer the barn doors any how, from the amout of work it's going to take for me to fix this issue with the tailgate I feel it's better to have the barn doors, has anyone done this swap, whats involved?

Too bad your not in houston texas... I want to go the opposite route. From what I've gathered it's a lot if fabricating. My new lift glass and tailgate do fit but it's not plug in play

 

[1990Obscammed]

Well I suppose

Too bad your not in houston texas... I want to go the opposite route. From what I've gathered it's a lot if fabricating. My new lift glass and tailgate do fit but it's not plug in play

I'm going to do some more looking at my local scrap yard this week, and if I were in Texas, you wouldn't want parts from an upstate NY burban that was a schools plow truck it's entire life until I got it lol

 

[SUBURBAN5]

Well I suppose

I'm going to do some more looking at my local scrap yard this week, and if I were in Texas, you wouldn't want parts from an upstate NY burban that was a schools plow truck it's entire life until I got it lol

From what I've seen you need the brackets that's spot welded next to the taillights,, the contacts and the middle bracket on the top center of the roof. I believe it's bolted