I just bought a 1964 Chevy short bed fleetside and the guy I got it from didn`t know much about the truck. He did know it had a different frame than original and he thought it was about a 90`s frame but it has disc brakes and a coil rear suspension.
I have read the discs came out in 71 and the last year for the coil spring rear suspension was 1972.
Is this right and is there any way to positively identify the frame?
Thanks, Mike  

Look under the truck you should be able to tell if the cab or box mounts have been welded on or if the are stock rivited. If it has coil springs and trailing arms then it can't be any newer then 73 like you said. They could have just changed the front crossmember. They are the same from 63-87 with the later ones being metric. They are a direct bolt in with the exception of a couple of bolt holes have to be drilled or filed out. Does it have 5 bolt wheels or 6 bolt? 72 was the first 5 bolt wheels  

It has 5 bolt wheels.
I will look for the mounting brackets.
Thanks  

I actually talked to someone else about the truck and they said it had a Suburban cross member and a Suburban rearend, but they aren`t sure of the year.  

Look on the rear end and see if they left the ID tag on. Get the numbers and go to Chev dealer and see what the say. There should be a year code in the number.
The front and rear end parts for 73-87 are all basicly the same except the later being mecric. It should be easy to get parts just cross referanc the stuf when you tack it apart. Is there something special you are in need?  

All of the parts are there but I`m going to be putting tubular control arms and I want to be able to get the ball joints, etc for the right year plus whenever I need to get brake parts, etc I need the year. I read on Wikipedia that the Suburban used basically a truck frame, so if I want to get brake parts etc, I should be able to just specify a year, is that correct. In other words if I ordered tubular control arms for say a 1974 1/2 ton then they should fit a 73-87 Suburban crossmember.  

I looked at lmc and www.classicindustries.com and they list from 73-87 classic says 71-90 ball joints are the same. lmc catalog goes from 73-87 and list one a arm for all.
The only thing I know that very is the brake rotors some are 1 inch and some are 1 1/4 inch.when you order spindles. I got my spindles from AIM or belltech (add in TRUCKIN) cheeper then some others.  

Thanks, after a little research I also found out that a lot of the stuff is the same. AC Delco lists Suburban and C10 with different ball joint numbers, but I looked under Oreilly and the Borg Warner number are the same for both vehicles.
I did identify the rear as a 10-bolt 8.5