got the other side done. its so nice to shut the door and be greated by nothing more than "thud". even with the doors empty and gutted. they still just go thud. whereas before, empty and gutted, when you shut it you were greated by "BOINGiongiongiongiongiong" as the center of the door where the handle is at would spring in and out making some nasty racket. i very highly reccomend this to anybody in the middle of some serious body-work! it greatly improves the "perception of quality" that comes from interfacing with the truck. it seems so simple, and i can see where some people are probly thinking im some kind of freak with a massive OCD problem. but when you have been driving 72'-93' dodge trucks as long as i have (25yrs), and always thought the dodge doors felt "cheap", this is a huge deal. and actually a pretty simple fix. and if you go back and look at my first video of the door where i demonstrate the problem, then watch the after video, you can clearly see, the problem is solved! now im gonna work on a good way to stiffen the outside door handle so that it doesnt flex up and down. i think i might just have to go buy a cordless grinder for that one, and go hack that section of door out of some doors at a junk yard. then "laminate" them to the inside of my doors so that it spreads the load of the handle when you push the button, out accross the door. mine flex so bad the metal around the mounting holes for the studs in the handles is cracking, and at least one of the cracks has spread far enough that its visible from outside the truck. then if that goes well, i might try to figure out a way to reinforce the lower hinge mounting area so that the hinge doesnt destroy the door again the way it did on big-whiteys original driver door. if i get these doors structurally beefy, i will be very-very happy! although, i did spy a crack in the floor today near the drivers side front cab mount. LOL, it never ends! i guess Chrysler never intended for us to drive these trucks past 200,000miles. LOL

 

okay, i have been researching how to utilize the 3-wire VSS in my 93' tranny to operate the speedo in my 91.5' truck all day. i have gathered alot of info. i learned that the difference is the addition of an 8volt power wire which comes from pin #7 of the SBEC. so i wasted an hour and a half tonight dissecting the orange wire from pin #7 out of an old gas engine harness (which bye the way, pin #7 in a 90' gas engined truck is an 8volt supply). then i carefully drilled out the hole for pin #7 in my 60 pin SBEC connector and installed said wire, hoping that just because the FSM doesnt say pin #7 is 8volts doesnt mean its not. well, unfortunately its not! there is a residual .44volts at pin #7 in a 91.5' truck that was a diesel/5-speed. DANG! sooooo, does anybody have any ideas for supplying 8 volts to the 3rd connection on the 3-wire VSS? im no electrical engineer, and could really use some help here.

 

Great idea on the doors...and a heck of a job too!!!

You should make up another thread with just this information in it...then it could be put into the sticky!!

 

Great modification on the doors! that's awesome

 

You are a king haha very nice mod to your trucks and great fix for the rest of us! and like cows said a lil more detailed write up and your fix could become one of the threads for body fixes on our rigs!

 

http://www.powerstream.com/dcdc.htm

Look at their 12-24 V in 9 V out converters. 3 amps should be plenty. A little pricey at about $50, so you might be able to find something suitable for less. If I had more time, I'd work out a recipe for you from radio shack parts . . . but this would be a bolt-in solution.

The doors in these trucks totally need stiffening! Maybe you could post some dimensions to document what you did?

 

Hey Wheelie,


Love the reinforcement ideas with reference to your doors. Would be really cool for you to do a thread that showed all of your door upgrades at once, You hit the nail on the head with reference to the flaws of the doors, especially the bottom hinge ripout routine they follow..

 

thanks for the props guys! and thanks for the link Alec. one of those might just be the ticket. now, upon more studying, it would appear that the computer actually is not necessary for the speedo to work? am i missing something here? if i dont actually need the computer for the speedo, then i dont need the computer at all! if thats the case, i am gonna pull the harness, and dissect it right down to the bare necessities. i have an external voltage regulator. and no cruise. why do i have a computer? it would appear the only working functions of it are the WIF light, the WTS light, and to spit out codes? if everything is mechanical (the way i like it) i dont need no stinking codes. LOL

 

and after banging my head off the wall for a week trying to figure out how im gonna come up with 8volts for my VSS. i had a realization today! you know those times when the solution to a problem is so obvious you over-look it? well i think this may be one of those times. here is why:



that is a 91.5' speed sensor, sitting behind a 93' speed sensor. the 91.5' obviously converts an old-school cable type speedo drive to electric. the 93' sure does look like an old-school cable type drive on the gear end. DUH, get an old-school cable type drive from a 727 and run the 91.5' sensor! sometimes im an idiot! LOL

 

That door idea is a good one I've just gotten used to old flexy doors.

 

apperantly you have not had the lower hinge rip completely out of the door. it happens. and that is one of the next things on my loooong list of to-do's. fix the hinge area. that one will probably be a little more tricky. not looking forward to trying to weld inside the door. but im gonna do it anyway! i also think i am going to remove the spring from the lower hinge, as i believe that is what destroys the door. it gives the door some decent momentum right before the hinge runs out of swing, and puts the door in a pretty good flex situation as its trying to keep going, but the hinge wont let it. no spring, no extra momentum at the end of the motion when opening. it will be annoying when the uphill door wont stay open anytime the truck is sitting off camber. but that will be less annoying then the door destroying itself and falling on the ground! which dang near happened to me!

 

I agree wholeheartedly and will be making this mod myself. Thanks! My two main gripes about my first gens are the doors and the brakes. I've addressed the brakes, and now it's time to address the doors!

 

My dad has fixed 5 or 6 of those doors where the hinge rips out at the bottom. he beefs them up from the inside.

 

would like to see some pics of your dad's door fixes Crossy!

so, today has been a GOOD day! first off, got up nice and early and went junk-yarding. first thing i was looking for was a mechanical speed drive for a 518. found one under an 88' ramcharger! scored it for $5! and here it is installed in big-whiteys 518:



and, yes, the speedo now works perfectly! love easy fixes. according to my GPS it is reading about 1-2 ticks fast. when the speedo reads 65mph, the GPS reads 64. close enough for me!!!

also, last weekend i bought the parts to do a hydroboost conversion on my brakes as i have been having issues with them from day-1! i have been through 2 vacuum boosters, and 4 (yes 4) mastercylinders. and spent countless hours bleeding. but i cannot fix the problem. i am now thinking it may be the proportioning valve. but i have never had one go bad, so i dont know how the truck would react if it was bad. its just a guess. we will see how it acts after the hydroboost conversion. anyways, i learned that when you buy a reman hydroboost unit it does not come with the plunger/spring/spring-retainer/master cylinder adapter. you are supposed to use your old parts. well, i had no old parts. you cant buy those parts from the dealer. they are part of the $741 hydroboost assembly! and there just are not any Cummins trucks in the junk yards around here. nothing rusts, so unless they get wrecked they tend to last forever or go back east. well today was my lucky day!!!! i found a smashed 98' with hydroboost! it was hit so hard in the front that the hydroboost unit was less than arms reach while standing in front of the truck. and! somebody had already taken the mastercylinder, and removed the nuts from the adapter. all i had to do was pull the adapter off, pop the spring retainer out with my ignition key! LOL, and there it all was in my hand. took 15seconds, and the guy at the desk gave the parts to me! parts that could have become a real nightmare/money-pit to find/buy, fell in my lap for free! ME SOO HAPPY!!

said parts:

 

Uuuummmm.... Yeah, what he said.