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1st gen Body/Engine/Tranny/TC on F550 Rolling chassis
1st Gen. Ram - All TopicsDiscussion for all Dodge Rams prior to 1994. This includes engine, drivetrain and non-drivetrain discussions. Anything prior to 1994 should go in here.
Wow, after seeing the chassis, I’m starting to re-think my idea of building a custom frame. The nice thing is that the frame rails are pretty straight, without a lot of bends or steep kick-ups in the front or rear. This is going to be a very informative build. I wonder what the difference in frame rail width is, compared to a first gen Dodge. It’s got to be close!
Yes it is, As far as body swaps go it looks to be pretty straight forward but time will tell.
Am not sure what the width between frame rails is. When it is in front of me will take a bunch of measurements and post them up for you.
These frames were built to take a lot of weight, you can't really go wrong with using the chassis from one. And it saves the messing around with building your own. As much fun as that can be sometimes.
Don't see any big issues coming up as far as mounting the body on the chassis. Will mount the cummins, tranny and transfer case first and modify everything to fit around it.
Life kicked my butt the last 2-3 years, and had to abandon a bunch of projects, the f550/1st gen hybrid being the first to be abandoned....but not forgotten.
Have since found myself in a good place again, and have been putting all the pieces back together. Good job, big food garden, a small shop and no one to bug me, unless I want them to.
So have started collecting the pieces.
2009 f550 4x4 with a blown 6.4 and a nearly new zf6, owned by a heavy duty mechanic who had a service body on the back. This engine actually got him 400,000 and had a programmer in it from day one, and while it is a high mileage chassis, he had done great service on everything. Once it started leaking oil into the coolant though, he upgraded to something newer and left me his scraps. Rear end was rebuilt recently, zf6 has about 5000km’s on it, and everything else had regular maintenance. The engine still moves it along, so got a good chance to drive it and see if anything popped up....nothing popped up. So, borrowed a deck truck from work and took it away.
Next, talked to a good friend of mine, the only man I know around here who loves 1st gens more than me, and has a collection to boot. Turns out he had a 12 valve out of an 89 that was in a front end collision and written off, that he grabbed the engine out of. 180,000km’s on the ticker when he pulled it. So I relieved him of his little lump of gold in exchange for some fancy rectangular paper. When money permits, I will be sending the pump to Gilles for a massage.
My friend will also be providing me with the cab, clip, hood and fenders for the project.
These are just teaser pictures for now, everything is in storage at the moment and have not had any time with work and the garden to get started on the project yet, just collecting the pieces so when I am ready, I can get a good chunk of it done and drivable. Just need the conversation flywheel, adaptor plate and motor mounts, than I can start tearing into it. My friend also has a knuckle crane, so we will pick a day when I have everything and start moving the heavy bits around, after that it will be a few months of convincing a 1st gen and Cummins to live peacefully in an ford chassis.
The overall plan since I last posted has not changed much, I will be doing super singles, likely on 40” tires, tucked up into some trimmed fenders with modified dually fiberglass flares to cover. Am still not sure the dually fender up front wont look strange, but figure it cant hurt to try and see. Am not a fan of lifted trucks personally, but I do like me some ground clearance, so I will be doing some heavy trimming and modifying.
Anyways, just wanted to bring this thread back from the dead, and get the ball rolling again.
Not even a choice in my mind! The mans reputation proceeds himself, and if I am going to spend money on a pump, it may as well be done by a man as knowledgeable as him. Now the question is what sticks to use for his pump...Giles won’t recommend because of the ‘he said she said’ debacle, which is fair. Am going to get him to tune the pump for 300hp, and he says with the right injectors I can get to 400 semi safely. The ‘he said she said’ is real online though, and it leaves my head spinning every time I search injectors.....sac, vco, 4 hole, 7 hole....etc. I just don’t want to be that guy everyone behind me hates 😆. I have no black smoke love.
98 12 valve help (posting here because it is recent so may get help)
My 98 12 valve had seemed like it had blown a oil cooler because it sent a ton of oil into the rad overflowing it. I then fixed it and was flushing the rad but I noticed after Filling my oil up it went down a little I was like oh ok I’ll fill it back up. Did two more flushes (filling with water and powdered soap driving till hot then draining) and I checked the oil again Because I noticed there was a ton of oil still and black looking droplets in a more watered down grey oil. And my oil was more than half way down the fill line. So I’m going like what the heck it’s gone way down? Would that mean I have a blown head gasket or at least a leaking one? The truck runs and drive good but like I said oil in the wrong places I guess. The oil cooler was also from a auto wrecker no knowledge on engine I’m came off of other than it was clean and a nice motor. And I see no visible leakes of oil so far. And places to check? Head gasket? Others any help appreciated
"(posting here because it is recent so may get help)" Doubtful, mainly because you hijacked a thread that has nothing to do with your problem.
Instead, try posting in a more pertinent forum such as here (where you posted before), https://www.dieseltruckresource.com/...rivetrain-100/, and title your new post something that pertains to your problem/issue. Having a signature describing your truck helps folks know the rest of the story for some background info too.
Did a little playing around with photoshop to get an idea of what the dually fender up front would look like and it actually may turn out looking alright.
This is also showing the fender stretched about 10" in length, as well as having the front tire moved forward.
Since I am doing a body swap I will have the ability to place the cab and fenders mostly where I would like, so I will be moving everything back a few inches to push the front tire forwards in the fender well. The drivetrain will move back with the body as well, to keep clearance for the radiator and fan, and the only real cons of doing this is having the modify the driveshafts and engine/transmission mounts, and I have to modify the steering shaft anyways so that is a non issue. The pros are a better approach angle, more centred drivetrain mass, better front drive shaft angle and ease to clearance a 42ish" tires without lift.
Looks good. Gonna take some body work to make it nice.
That is for sure! The inner fender is going to be the trickiest bit of sheet metal to work out I figure. Cutting the fender well and bending a new lip to secure the flair to will be fairly painless.
Was thinking I may end up trimming the bottom of the fender in the front like you did as well, inline with the bottom of the grill, and than build a wide bumper that wraps around to meet the fiberglass fenders. Should give it a bit more of a finished look.
Guy previous had a 3500kg service body loaded with tools, and put a heavier spring pack on the back, by the end I reckon I’ll have about 1500kgs on the back. Should give me plenty of left over to load compost and totes filled full of liquid.
04-28-2018, 06:18 AM
