Posted by Hoyle Hodges on Monday, July 23, 2001 at 9:30PM :
I spent Saturday with Charles Talbert at his shop in North Carolina. Charles is the person who has perfected the installation of the Cummins 3.9BT, mated to the 21/2 ton 5 speed OD trans into the M-37. When I arrived he was finishing up putting a 230 from one Fire Dept brush truck, into another so they would have one running truck, while he installed a 3.9 into the other one. His set-up includes power steering, and a dual piston master cylinder. Installation is neat, clean and very strong. He says at 2600 rpms he gets 58mph with 5.83s and 72 with 4.89s. His shop is well organized and free of clutter, and set-up to do any job. He says he is so busy right now, that he won't have time to manufacture repower kits for a couple of months. His installation with the SAE 3 bellhousing does not work with PTO winches due to clearence problems. Charles said it was just a matter of indexing the bellhousing and drilling holes to overcome this. Once again he's just to busy to take his truck apart and do that right at the moment. He also had a MARS hercules engine with adaptor and M-37 tranny which he claims is the first one sold in the states. He said it has 70,000 miles on it, and uses 1qt of oil every 1000 miles and has done so since new. I highly reccommend him as he is very nice, easygoing, and seems very honest. His repower is not cheap at $25,000 dollars parts, new engine and labor. That's why I'm trying to get him to develop the installation kit which should prove to be much cheaper. All in all a great day with a master.
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