Been on a debate with myself.....
My 84 Runner (22R) is getting a lil rough.
Floor boards have a few holes and body is seperating, had a lot of rust - I bondo'd a few years ago - Rig is trail rig, glass is cracked....
Well I have an 87 Runner that has a great bod firewall back - no cracks in the glass....

How much trouble would swapping the bodies be? the 87 is an auto the 84 is a 5 speed - the 87 is minus the motor and tranny..... so the 84 would stay - I know that tunnel may need trimming (fine - I want duals in the future) and in the process a 2" body lift.
I would need to keep the 84 front - 87 was in an accident so all that is shot.... then there is the pedals.

Should I swap bodies or weld/pop rivit steel into the floors and be done and work with I got???????????

It's hard for us to say without seeing how bad the rust holes really are. I'd say if you have to replace more than 25% of the body to repair the rust holes it'd be better to use another cab and bed from the donor.

Maybe I'm missing something.... but I wonder if it's be easier to take the drivedrain and front end from the '84 and put into the '87.
The tunnel part of the bodies are the same, only different really is the floor pan behind it wher ethe holes for the shifters are. Oh and like you said the firewall for the clutch pedal, too.

I'd just chop it up and tube it out. If I had the money thats exactly what I'd do to mine

thanks for the inputs... keep em coming
hhhmmmm the cut up not a bad idea, but i wanted to keep it looking like a runner....

thought about building the 87 BUT - then i need to SAS it.....
my 84 frame is in real good shape.......

its really not hard to swap bodies.
im kicking myself for fixing my pickup cab instead of swapping on another one. if its bad you will most likely spend way more time in body work than body swapping.

I agree ... If you have a good body avaliable , swap it .. in years to come , you'll be glad you did .

Not intended as hijack, maybe relevant....
If you do something like this and swap a complete body, which title stays with it? The body or frame?

I would think you'd have to do a salvage title or something of the like. Your state DMV would know, as I'm sure this varies.

Keep the '84 title and use the '84 dash, or rivet the '84 dash vin tag to the '87 dash. Oh, and I also vote for swapping the bodies...