DRW to SRW Conversion
 

Newbie here,

I owned a great '96 12 valve 5 speed 3500 years ago with ex brake and gearvendors and loved it. Now coming back and want to own the 3rd gen common rail 5.9.

I'm looking for the ultra rare Mega Cab with G56 6 speed manual and 5.9. Since they are fairly scarce and there are some nice Mega Cab Duallys I was wondering about buying the Dually and removing the fender flares, outter wheels and slapping on a set of bushwacker flares. No drive line changes.

Anyone done this or can post pics of it? I know hubs will stick out some but the fronts look ok. The innner rears look like they will track in line with the fronts.

Thanks for replies!

So you'd just run the one rear wheel dished way in??? It would look like one of those trucks made to go on railroad tracks.

Yes, single rear dished in. With fender flares removed from the bed. DRW Beds are same as SRW, right?

I think it would look exactly like the front wheel. It's the same rim and tire used on the front. And from the ones I have followed on the highway and the 3500 DRW gen2 I owned I think the inner rear wheel exactly tracks the front. In other words the distance between the inner wheels on the DRW rear is the same as a SRW truck. Just wondering if anyone has done it?

On the front axle there is a extension that comes off and you can put a factory wheel on.

On the rear I don't think you can get away with pulling the dually fenders off and just putting flares on. And my personal opinion the rear dual dishen in on its own would look bad.

Look up auto trader.com I saw 17, 2500 mega cab 4X4 with the 5.9 diesel and manual transmission.

They are the same if you run a dually wheel on both ends.

The dually rear axle is extended 2-3 inches to allow the bearings to mate with the dually adapter on the rear hubs.

So the wheels would stick out like 2 inches each side in the rear. If you ran some wheel flares youd get away with it.

I put 150k miles a year on my dually.

Im thinking hard about making my truck a single tire using the same tire ford uses. Its a 20 incher, with like a 3600 rating. My only problem is I weight around 8500 on the rear axle often, so Im still pretty much just thinking about it.

Too bad a super single tire isnt made for us that has a 4500lb rating. Thatd be perfect for me.

Would help my mpgs too.

Carey

A dually axle has a thicker axle tube then a 3/4 or 1 ton rear axle too.

really? i thought it was the same part number. just the axle shafts and hubs and brake calipers were different. at least this is what i thought. i've been entertaining the idea of converting mine to a drw.

i went from a dually to a srw all i did was pull the front spacers or spindles, whatever you call them off. Then put bushwacker pocket flares and factory 2500 rims with tires on. looks good. aside from the holes i have yet to fix. the axle tubes cant be to much diff in size or the 2500 rims wouldnt have mounted correctly??

The autotrader is a great lead. Thanks!

There are several manufacturers that you can buy a 19.5" or a 22.5" wheel from. Then you can run a real tire. Like 5,000 pound G rated that should last you 150,000 miles or more.

i agree. seeing how i probalby won't convert mine to a DRW, i'll buy a set of the SRW 19.5s and run some G rated tires. they'll be a little more expensive at first but will last a lot longer for me than other tires.

I converted mine... I took my mineral gray 2500 down to the dealership and had them convert it into a bright silver 3500 dually!! [director]

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I'll bet they even zeroed the odometer for you...[coffee]...Ben

[QUOTE=kaywt;2713595]I converted mine... I took my mineral gray 2500 down to the dealership and had them convert it into a bright silver 3500 dually!! [director]


LOL ! Quite a nice conversion!!! [coffee]

Well thanks to that Auto trader lead and that website's great ability to search for specifics I found an '06 3500 SRW Laramie Mega 4x4 Manual trans 4 hours away. It's in my driveway now where my car used to be.