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Well, I thought I'd introduce myself here since I'm a Ford owner now. Quick background...I've mostly owned Dodge trucks through the years, but have had Chevy, Nissan, etc as well. Mostly I'm attached to the Cummins engine I suppose. Anyway, our '87 GMC Suburban finally bit the dust, and it was time for a newer family rig. What we ended up with, is a 2003 Ford Excursion Limited 4x4 with a '97 Cummins engine. It's a 12 valve P-Pumped motor with mild mods including:
Twin turbos, HX35 over S475
ARP head studs
O-ringed head by Snedge
370 Marine injectors
Zero plate in the pump, and other tweaks
Hellmans (I think) intercooler
It runs pretty well, and tops out at about 68 psi boost.
The most recent upgrades included swapping in a ZF6-750 transmission and NV271F manual transfer case. I just completed this swap a few weeks ago. It was time for tires as well, so I found some Rickson forged aluminum 19.5 wheels, and mounted up some 285/70-19.5 Yokohama TY303s.
Anyway, I'll update with more later, but just wanted to introduce myself. I'm new to the Ford game (other than my trusty Ford Festiva daily driver), so I'm sure I'll have plenty of questions along the way!!
Nice try - you can't get off that easy . We're gonna need a lot more pictures and information about your rig. Everything from mechanical upgrades to cosmetic.
You have a sweet looking Ex and it's great to see an Ex with a Cummins
I'll update a little every day or two until I get caught up with the progress thus far. There's still a long way to go, but I think the worst is behind me!
Here's a little background on how I bought it. It had 260,500 miles on the vehicle, and a '97 12v Cummins engine with 320,000 on it. The Cummins had been in the Excursion for about 20k miles when I bought it. Evidently the original 6.0 had lived past its useful life by 240k, when a guy named Kasey installed the Cummins. Before installing it, he planned on going through and rebuilding it; however, the crosshatching was still great on the cylinder walls, and all tolerances were well within factory spec! So, he resealed the engine, built the twin turbos with piping from Source Automotive, studded the head with ARPs, had it o-ringed, tabbed the killer dowel pin, installed 60# exhaust springs, put on a new water pump, installed a 4,000 rpm governor spring kit in the p-pump, and rebuilt the HX35 turbo. He also installed 200 hp injectors, and an Air Dog fuel pump and filter system with a big line kit. Finally, he painted everything green while he had it out. Here's some pics of his install a couple years ago:
Well, I thought I'd introduce myself here since I'm a Ford owner now. Quick background...I've mostly owned Dodge trucks through the years, but have had Chevy, Nissan, etc as well. Mostly I'm attached to the Cummins engine I suppose. Anyway, our '87 GMC Suburban finally bit the dust, and it was time for a newer family rig. What we ended up with, is a 2003 Ford Excursion Limited 4x4 with a '97 Cummins engine. It's a 12 valve P-Pumped motor with mild mods including:
Twin turbos, HX35 over S475
ARP head studs
O-ringed head by Snedge
370 Marine injectors
Zero plate in the pump, and other tweaks
Hellmans (I think) intercooler
It runs pretty well, and tops out at about 68 psi boost.
The most recent upgrades included swapping in a ZF6-750 transmission and NV271F manual transfer case. I just completed this swap a few weeks ago. It was time for tires as well, so I found some Rickson forged aluminum 19.5 wheels, and mounted up some 285/70-19.5 Yokohama TY303s.
Anyway, I'll update with more later, but just wanted to introduce myself. I'm new to the Ford game (other than my trusty Ford Festiva daily driver), so I'm sure I'll have plenty of questions along the way!!
Here's a quick pic:
Nice truck! I really like the wheel and tire setup - more pics and info on those too please.
So, the build pics thus far are prior to me purchasing the Ex. From CarFax reports and some other contacts, I found out the vehicle changed hands 3 times pretty quickly...within the space of 18 months - 2 years. It started life in Texas and lived there accumulating the bulk of its mileage. It then went to Colorado for a short time before going to Idaho/Montana/Washington areas for it's Cummins conversion and following owner. Then a guy in New Mexico bought it, and then quickly sold it to another guy in upper Wisconsin. Wow. So, details of the build between when Kasey had it and I got it are sketchy. I mostly can only trust/know what I see. At any rate, I bought it and drove to upper WI to pick it up. The just rebuilt transmission went out about 200 miles from where I bought it at. I'll spare the details, but it was a very taxing trip in continuous sub-zero weather with a 6 month pregnant wife. I spent way too much time out in parking lots working on it to get it going. But, I finally was able to work out some things, and diagnose which gears in the transmission were still holding marginally. I wrote a new PCS tune on the side of the interstate to hold 1st until redline, skip through 2nd and catch 3rd (the only gear it really had still holding well), and then hold third indefinitely throughout the rpm range without torque converter lockup. This limited us to about 41 mph for the last 800 miles of the drive, but we made it.
Once we got it back home, we limped it around for the next couple months driving it like this as our family vehicle while I was collecting parts. I decided that the only thing that would hold up to my needs was a stout manual transmission...and it narrowed things down to either the ZF6 or NV5600. I needed something that would function well as a daily driver, a family rig, be able to withstand 600 hp and 1200 ft-lbs of torque, be reliable, and also be able to hook to loads in the 10k - 20k lb range frequently without problem. I also wanted something that I could use an exhaust brake with later on.
I didn't want to use a G56, and the NV5600 parts are harder to find and seemed like the integration was going to be more challenging. Plus, I liked the gusseting on the case of the ZF6 and the integrated pressurized lubrication with outputs to an external cooler. So, I began collecting parts.
The floor humps in Superduty trucks with manual and automatic transmissions are different...the manual ones being ~ 6-8" taller, and shaped differently as well. I scored a floor pan out of an '06 Superduty, and got the steering column as well. I ordered a rebuilt ZF6-750 (the heavier duty version ZF6) and decided to get a rebuilt NV271F transfer case as well. This is essentially the same case as the stock NV273F, except it's the manually shifter version instead of the electric shift. At this point, being stuck on the side of the road and helpless was a driving motivator to make things simple and reliable.
I opted to go with a 3250 plate load multi-friction double disc clutch from South Bend. They actually offer this clutch as a standard option due the demand to move away from the Ford diesel and automatic combo. It integrates a Cummins flywheel with a pilot bearing to fit a ZF6. The clutch discs are fit to the Cummins flywheel and splined for the ZF input shaft. It really is a bolt on and go kit!
So, pics of the collected parts. Again, I'll spare the details, but I have part numbers I think for almost everything if someone needs. I got the transmission and transfer case from Joe's Transmission and Differential, the clutch from South Bend, some matting etc from LMC Truck, a bunch of parts from I think Great Bear Lake Ford (or something...I forget right now), engine adapter and flywheel spacer came from from Destroked, and most of the rest of the parts from eBay, etc.
09-03-2014, 05:03 PM
The Cummins and Transfer case swap make it even more bullet proof.
. We're gonna need a lot more pictures and information about your rig. Everything from mechanical upgrades to cosmetic. 
