Posted by Lew VB on Saturday, August 04, 2001 at 4:37PM :
In Reply to: Hey Lew VB posted by Brian in Oregon on Saturday, August 04, 2001 at 3:25AM :
I bought the truck at an auction for $45. There wasn't much to begin with. No motor, tranny, rad, box, floor boards, pedals, wiring, bumper, ect. I probably should of passed but I wanted an army truck so bad and I could afford much, I bought it. With everything missing my options were open. The firewall was already hacked, I beleive that the last motor in it was a /6. We spent the first month cutting all that "cobble" off. Considering the fact that I didn't have much money we made do with what was a avilable. My brother had a '78 Dodge 2-wd pick-up that donated alot to this project including /6 motor, brake master cylinder and pedal and wiring. I made a cardboard templete and went to the junk yard and went from car to car {in the Chrysler area} looking for a rad that would fit, found it a '69 Dart. I also got the tranny from that car. I had the rad brkts on the rad flipped so it would sit inside the front grill. Once we got the motor/tranny in and acommidated we fabricated a new floor board/firewall system.
Our motto was first look at the junk yard, next try fabricate it, and only if we despritly had to buy it through VPW, Memphis Equip., ect. We completelty redid the brakes with new wheel cylinders, and shoes. New wheel bearings, and seals, cleaned all that years of crud from the axles and transfer case. The floor shifter is from a 197? Int. Scout. I fabricated a heater from the heater system from a Chevette {I swear that those are the only non-Chrysler Parts}. After 1 1/2 of work finally got it on the road only to have the auto tranny go in 3 months. It got parked for the next 4 years while I started a wood working biz. Last Spring {2000} I started to work on it again. I wanted to replace the motor when I changed the tranny because that motor did have some problems. I looked ant the possiblity of putting a Dakota V-6 and a O-D Tranny but when I found this motor on MOPARTS.COM I knew where I was going. I had the tranny rebuilt, and put this motor in. We had to do some custom bending on the headers to miss the motor mounts but when we got it going, it was worth it. Added a elect. fan, and an exhaust system and we were off. We only had to put a small hump in the fire wall, the headers cleared the steering box granted the headers have to be on the motor when installing. The distibuter is easily accessable along with the oil filter. The only drawback is that if I redid it I would have made the firewall hump taller so I could get the valve cover off. The gas mileage is unknown at this point. The speedo/odometer is also out of the donor truck, due to the lower gearing it's off a bit.
I'll dig up some pic to e-mail to you.
Take care
Lew
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