Quazai OT...well mostly: Suburban Cummins swap


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Posted by Caleb in Kansas [172.68.35.19] on Saturday, July 23, 2016 at 01:31:36 :

Warning: this is a bit rambly and I'm doing it on my phone so please forgive me!

Well, I did it, I've got the cummins sittting in my 95 Suburban now. I tore apart the 01 Dodge the weekend before the Iowa rally and found that my "catastrophic" oil leak was mostly just the motor rattling itself apart and i was missing a bolt from the vac pump with the other being only finger tight. The pan gasket was pretty crusty so i pulled it and checked the bearings which were all in great shape.

As far as the conversion goes, it's been relatively smooth. I'm using the stock 01 dodge radiator and CAC, just trimmed off the tabs and reshaped the tank on the CAC with the help of Dad and his tig (stainless rod looks an awful lot like aluminium...i told him his eyes were getting too old, or he did knock his head when he fell off the roof, either way he should give me his tig lol). The rad is closer to the fan than I'd like but I ran out of room to move stuff foreward when i figured out that the condensor is about 2x thicker than the normal chebby ones. Instead of cracking the AC for a different core, we chucked the fan clutch in the lathe and took about 3/8" off the face. If it or the radiator give me problems, I'll replace the fan clutch and drop in a thinner dual pass radiator. I used a pair of frame mounts out of my parts 94 ram 2500 and still have the factory motor mounts on the cummins. In the back I modified the chevy tranny cross member to accept the Dodge mount and i made a hybrid 241c/dld to get the speed signal and switch for the front axle engagement. I'm not sold that what i did to get the switch is going to work since the shift is kind of loose and feels a bit funny so i might swap the Dodge stuff back into it and wire in a switch for the front axle. There are a few differences between the 241c and 241dld which I'd be happy to explain if anyone was interested (just email me). Since I'm running the 24V, i gutted ALL of the wiring from my 01 and I'm running the FASS DDRP which i have mounted on the x-member behind the transfer case. I modified the stock 42 gallon suburban so i could have kind of a quasai draw straw setup using 1/2" fuel line. I'm sure i don't need 1/2" but the aluminum line was cheap ($18 for a 20' roll from speedway motors) so i have that from the tank to the pump, then 3/8 from the pump to the motor. I figured i would need 2 new drive shafts (about $700 last i checked) but my positioning let the front shaft work...barely...as for the rear, it turned out that the rear driveshaft from the 94 parts dodge was perfect! A $40 1410-1350 conversion joint was all i needed!

Now that i have the shifters hooked up, I'm hoping to start wiring tomorrow...heck, maybe I'll have a test fire by the end of the weekend!

A buddy of mine bought the 454 off me and got ahold of a set of 1 ton springs and torsion bars. If i did it all right, I'll be towing the WC up to Fairfield with my 1 ton cummins suburban!

PW content: I have 2 flat tires on the WC, looks like I'm well overdue for new rubber all the way around. Last one i repaired was dry rot near the valve stem.



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