I recently came across the truck that I have always wanted, which is exactly like my D250 club cab in the silver white paint, but this one is a W250. The body is exceptionally clean, and the owner has a lot of costly upgrades mounted on his truck such as stainless running boards, air bags, front grill guards, turbo mount BD exhaust brake. He is wanting $5,450.00 for it, and the problem is is that it has 308,000 on the odometer. Took it for a drive and it has all the signs of a vehicle with those miles, like the death wobble, guage cluster is not working (probably sensors), brakes are shot, and his entire front portion of the engine is coated in oil, and I got him to fess up that his power steering pump requires a fill up every once in a while.

Now that you all have the information, my ideas were to sell my CC D250 out right, except pull all the go fast goodies that I installed on it, and then take the engine, NP205, and the DTT transmission off of the W250 single cab truck which only has 125,000 miles on it. Borgeson will go along with anything else I have added. I would then swap the older engine, tranny and transfer case back to my W250.
I have never ever done any swapping out before, although I am mechanically inclined. What tools am I needing to borrow/rent, and what is the estimated time to swap from truck to truck, and have the W250 single cab ready for selling? My wife is tired of me owning 2 1st gens, and she said in 6 months there better be one in the lot I figure If it is to be one, I might as well have a club cab W250. She keeps telling me that the looks of a single cab are more of a "truck look", but the club cabs with the captain chairs are very comfy. Advice, please.

 

I have a feeling that the truck won't be for sale very long, so I have this window of opportunity that I will be needing your inputs on to help me decide. If my wifey said all right, you can keep both, then I probably wouldn't even persue the swap thing. Oh, yeah, I forgot to say the truck for sale with the 308,000 miles had blow by up the yang as I unscrewed the oil filler cap. You wouldn't know it by the looks of the interior and the body...it looks like it has around 108,000 instead. It is a 1993 BTW, which is the year of both my trucks.

 

A straight swap, no changing tranny types or from 2wd to 4wd should go fairly easy. Especially when its all the same model year, should be very few gotcha's.

I haven't done a Cummins yet but when I swapped D24's in my Volvo's I used a forklift for an engine/tranny lift and I remember thinking that next time I would rent/buy a good engine lift. (Of course my forklift has a little drift to it which doesn't help) I have seen advice to that effect on these forums several times, especially when discussing heavy 5.9's.

If it is the truck of your dreams and you can afford it you should go for it (and you have the time to do the wrenching).

Good Luck,
JP.

 

It's all bolt together stuff, the only special tools you will need is a trans jack and an engine hoist. Working by yourself I'd say you could get it done in a week of 8 hour days, maybe less.

 

Should be a fairly straight forward swap. It wouldnt take long for the major pieces to get changed over, its usually the small items and small details that take the longest. Good luck, and most importantly, have fun!