Hey everybody! I'm a newbie on here but I'm kinda excited to tell you about my truck that I've been building. I don't even know where to start but here we go.

 

I bought a pretty rusted ole dodge with a cummins engine and an a518 tranny from a guy off of craigslist up in iowa. About the same time I found a pretty clean 94 obs crewcab 2wd with a busted crank in a town nearby so I went and got it also

 

I wanted to build a truck to haul the kids and pull a trailer that got pretty good mileage so the plan came together.

 

The ford was in surprisingly good shape. The guy told me it had a busted crank. He just had a transmission put in and was done with it. He said he was driving down the road and it just quit moving, Still ran but won't drive. Then he shut it down and then it won't start. The starter would spin but the engine didnt. So I bought it and took it to the shop and separated the tranny and engine. Busted flex plate. Sold the idi and transmission on Craigslist the next week for almost what I paid for the whole truck.

 

I have a correction to make ...the dodge being an 89 so it came with a 727 not the a518. The difference being the 727 doesn't have overdrive. I figured that I needed over drive so I got back on Craigslist and found an overdrive a518 about 2 hrs away that needed rebuilt. When I got to talking to the guy he said it was rebuilt around 10,000 miles ago and was shifting weird. He want like nothing for it as he considered it a core. The next day I cracked it open.....knowing nothing about transmissions I wanted to see what it was all about. It was under a tarp at that guys house for awhile so I expected a bunch of junk in it. The pan was clean. So I ordered a transgo shift kit thinking it would maybe fix the shifting weird he talked about. I put the kit in and bolted the tranny to the engine then I noticed the throttle valve cable was bust from corrosion. That would indeed make it shift weird....mainly early soft shifts.

 

The engine went in in like 2 days. Seemed really easy. The hardest part was I wanted to use the ford married np205 with the dodge tranny. I had both a ford and a dodge so I took them apart and compared them together. I needed a dodge input in the ford case. So I made a spacer for the small dodge bearing to fit the ford case and a spacer to house the coupler or the dodge shafts since they are both male, transmission and transfer case. So the engine tranny and case are in but no front axle. I drove it like this for maybe a month or so. Stock cummins in a basically 2wd crewcab and was getting like 24mpg. It was awesome.

 

Here's the spacer I made

 

Life was good but with winter coming I had to get an axle under there. Back on Craigslist. Dana 60 an hour and a half north. Got it. 2 days later it's in.

 

So a shackle flip on the rear and it was on 35's. Still single wheel and barely any power. Milage dropped and no power ....junk. I then learned about all this free hp you can get by just turning screws. I print some stuff and am showing some buddies at work. Looked easy. One guy who was a mechanic for kenworth for 30 years said"don't do it just leave it stock. You'll blow a head gasket". Yeah right so on lunch break we are cranking stuff and turning stuff per the ultraweb and boom!!! Fire breathing monster. Never even moved it from the place I parked it and it was blowing puffs of smoke out of the stack...oh yeah before it ever started up the first time it got a single stack in the bed. I just knew it was gonna be fast. 35 yrs old grinning like a high school punk. I line a race up after work. 6.0l chevy extended cab. Keep in mind I'm 40 miles from home. So we cruise out the gate. Line up at the "legal drag strip". I have no gauges or nothing. Drove there stock now full race. I spool up...we go. Bam headgasket. The first person to show up....the kenworth mechanic.

 

Nice work.

 

I lost by the way. Mickey,the mechanic, gives me a ride to a buddies house. I borrowed his dodge to get home. I don't want to put too many miles on his truck so I load it on my trailer and pull it with my other obs with a turbo idi. Man it felt heavy. There's a fairly step grade right before his house and the old dually is pulling it put struggling. I pull into his driveway and park and smoke is rolling. Look under neath and its puking tranny fluid onto the crossover pipe. Oh loRd there's a fire. Ain't nobody got time for that. I'm throwing gravel and huffing and puffing.....I give up and run to his house and yell Fire!! He had an extinguisher like that. Saved it. Cooled off and even drove it home after work.. sorry I feel like this is my diary.

 

That head that came off the truck had cracks and I got scared so I ordered an eBay head from Alabama cylinder head. I also ordered a set of Mighty diesel head bolts. The truck set for a bit while I had to got back to work then I got it together. Still not enough power. Craigslist 2 hours south was a blown 5.9 cummins with a p pump. This thing sucked oil and went wide open till it threw a rod out the side. I found another block somewhere and built another engine

 

Engine number 2

 

Fuel plate mods and craigslist airdog and used rv285 injectors. Ran good but was extremely hot. Like 1800 on egts easy

 

I'm constantly on Craigslist. Stupid craigslist. I find an hx60 in st louis for cheap and he said it was rebuilt. So I ordered some 3 inch tubing and find a superduty intercooler a day later not but 10 miles from where the turbo was.