I'm mostly done with the 4wd conversion on my truck so i thought i would do a belated build thread. Always wanted to document one of my truck builds and never have, so here it is.

I started with a 91.5 D350 that i bought on a whim, a buddy of mine was selling it for $1,000. The truck was actually in good shape until a few years ago, I'm told that during a hurricane, Gustav i think, my friends uncle was hit on the front driver corner. The truck was set in a field until last fall when my friend got it to mud ride in. Thank goodness nothing was really torn up and became the new owner. I should have known that i would have my work cut out for me when i had to go back 3 people to get the title put in my name.

I have attempted to attach a starting pic, hopefully it comes out.

 

Can't see the damaged part in this view, but what shows looks real good. I look forward to the rebuild stages and envy your having the space to do that work, ... good luck!

 

I couldn't find the original picture as i purchased it, he had it posted on Craigslist for a while. What i thought was going to be a fender swap turned into a major ordeal. I ended up teaching myself to paint the hood, fender, bumper trim, and tailgate. After everything was done the hood wouldn't shut. Just my luck, the frame was bent. I was referred to a man that used to own a body shop and could straighten it at his house. I limped the truck over there with the old dry rotted tires and a wicked pull to the right. The guy did a great job and phase one was done. Here's a pretty good view of the tailgate and bumper i started with. The bumper was countoured into that sweet V shape from the dozer they used for extraction. I knew from the start a new bumper would be on the way so no biggie. You can see the fresh paint, definitely met my standards which weren't too high.

 

Found a pretty good picture of the damage pile. After i bought the truck i started to get cold feet thinking about all the work i had ahead of me but i had also decided that i really wanted a first gen so i kept a good eye on craigslist and the classifieds. I found the truck below about 2 hours away so me and the wife loaded up for a road trip. Obviously there were no pictures attached to the ad, would have saved me some fuel and time. The man was so proud of the truck that i hated to tell him what i really thought. No doubt the custom bug shield added to the value.

 

cool project! Definitely worth the work too.

 

Fast forward through several potential trucks and i finally pulled the trigger on this jewel. I found it in florida and the guy swore it was his daily driver. I corresponded through text with him for a while and we struck a deal, $4,800. I coordinated shipping and it was on the way. Now i had asked him everything i could think of from the comon dash crack to the a/c. He downplayed all flaws and suckered me in. When the driver showed up i felt like i had been mugged. The wiring was a mess, the gear ratio was different front to back, it was out of fuel, etc. That's just what pops in my mind, theres way more but i won't bore you, suffice it to say the truck was JUNK. Basically i bought a very expensive parts truck. One question that sticks out was when i said "does it have the stock radio". His answer was "yes, it has the stock radio". Well of course it did. Only problem was it had just been shoved in the hole where the radio goes. After a long period of mourning i decided on a course of action. I would hound this guy to try to ship the rest of my part such as the front lift springs, 38" tires (he kindly took them off so the transporter could ship it, i didn't intend on him keeping them), front shaft. And i would proceed with my red 2wd. I had spent the money that i had from selling my stroke and had no way to buy something else, i had to work with what i had. Upon close inspection of my parts i felt like i had everything to do the swap. Up until now i had the body work done, like i said i had waffled on the conversion several times, so the next big hurdle would be the inside. You could hide a person in the holes in the dash and the double layer cheap carpet had all kinds of nasty ground in. I love pictures and i assume everybody else does too so heres another one from the bodywork stage and what the truck looked like when i finally got it cranked.

 

The dash. I found a pretty good one at pull a part and started taking it out. I had heard some horror stories about the job and was anxious to try my hand. I also figured that if i messed up i would walk over to another one and learn from my mistakes. As luck would have it i got it out on the first try and gingerly brought my trophy home. I was so scared it would just shatter like a cracked mirror, but it made the journey. I'm convinced the secret to keeping a dodge dash alive is to abuse it. J/K, but there really is no good reason why a truck like the dash donor truck was good and so many others are gone. While i was in there i added a radio that i could hook my ipod up to and cleaned up a little. Also checked the bulbs and changed out the bad ones. It all came back together nice and one more problem was out the way. Btw, check out the mud on the floor. This truck had been abused, i'm told they would get it up so fast it would shift through the gears and then they would hydroplane it across a big mud hole in a guys backyard. Can't really complain though because if it would have been in good shape i would not have been able to afford it.

 

The T-case. I was originally going to use the married setup from my 5k parts truck, but i got to looking at the crossmember and felt like it would jam everything up a little close to the front requiring me to notch the crossmember. I also knew that the factory 2wd trans in my truck was good and that the 4wd trans was bad. I figured it would save me some money right now to use what i had that was good. I had actually bought a good converter for when i rebuilt the married trans, but as i usually do i chickened out at the last minute and cancelled it when i chose to use the 2wd trans. Future plans are to either nv4500 the truck or beef up the 518. Gonna wait until i have a problem out of the auto first though. Another reason i went with the divorced case was i just like them. They seem more old school and i like the idea that i can change trannys to whatever i like without hunting adapters and output shafts. So i pulled the one from my poor departed S10 seen below. The superdime as i referred to it was a great play truck, but i'm older now and much more mature (barely) so i parted it out. I let it soak on C list for a while but in this rocky economy i had only a few tire kickers. So parting it out was my solution. It had freshened up rockwell axles, mild 350, th400 w/reverse valve body, divorced 205, 49's. That truck did great in the mud and really great on the river, couldn't hardly sink something that light with such wide tires. But it was strictly a toy, to use it i had to load it on the trailer and tow it and all my buddies started getting into the tractor tire thing making my little superdime obsolete. This picture shows the motor as i pulled it to sell. The only other thing i sold was the rocks. Poor choice indeed, i wish i had kept it under a barn and my pals remind me how dumb that was all the time. I did make use of the 205 though. Before it went in the superdime i freshened it up and swapped all the yokes for 1410's. The only challenge now was how to mount it and some paint.

 

T case continued. I searched for a while and never found a way to mount the case that i liked. Naturally i didn't have any of the factory mounting hardware, that would have been too easy. So after some brainstorming i came up with the brackets below. The superdime was more forgiving with my mounting because i knew that truck wouldn't see the road, it was hardmounted. My dually would be different, i wanted to be able to do it all in this thing so it needed bushings. The 2 pipes go to a bracket bolted to the top of the case and the sandwiched angle iron bolts to the pass side of the case. I boxed the frame at the t case to give me something to weld the tabs and angle iron to. I figured most of my stress would be rotational and the dinky factory piece is just a pressed plate that it bolts to. So far this has worked well.

 

T case, about done. From the very beginning i knew that i wanted to run a pto winch. Good thing i knew it from the start because that's not really the kind of thing you want to add as an afterthought. I had put one on my old '89blazer a few years ago and it worked awesome. No more overheating or bogging down, you just had to worry about twisting frames. I liked that it could run all day and was way stronger than it's electric counterparts. I bought a used 10k ramsey pto winch a few years ago and set it on the shelf with the others because i figured one day i would build something to use it on. It came with a power take off that was cast iron and made for a 205. Only one problem, it only worked out the front. My old one was reversible, i could take it apart and make the output point towards the rear of the truck. The whole point of the build was to pull form the rear, that way my truck wouldn't sink due to the contact patch of 4 tires and i could also pull myself backwards out of whatever i got in. Fortunately i was able to hunt down the power take off that i had on the blazer from it's current owner. The blazer had gone through 3 people after i sold it and when i called the guy he surprised me when he said "i knew this call would come". Couldn't believe it, he said he took it off the truck and really didn't know what it was for but figured it had something to do with the winch that used to be on it. He let me have it back and i was in business. The guy lived in New Orleans, but a good friend of mine offered to pick it up for me while he visited family there, worked out better than ups. It's the blue one in the pic. Not my first choice due to it's aluminum housing, but i've put the winch in some really good binds with no problems. I knew this truck would be destined for rear disc brakes so i put the old e-brake cable to good use as my pto engage mechanism. I cut off the excess and put a spring on the arm at the pto. Works like a charm, you just pop the t case in neutral and press the e-brake. when you're done you pull the brake release and the pto pops out of gear. This is actually the 3rd truck i ran a pto on and it's the first time the e-brake idea hit me.

 

Winch. I finally got everything on the t case finished except the shifter, that's later with the floor work, so it was on to the point of the build, the winch. As stated i scored this ramsey from a guy that had posted it on craigslist. It turned freely and since there's not alot to screw up on one of these things i brought it home to await the right project. i replaced the seals that were replaceable, if i remember it was only about 2, and inspected the internals for wear or breakage. Everything checked out so i started putting it back together. First order of business was mounting location, i wanted it as far back as possible so the cable wouldn't have a long run to the fairlead and i found the perfect spot where the frame has a small notch. I squared the notch off to make a corner and fitted a piece of channel in there. The channel was 3/8 for the 6" part and 1/4 at the 2". Seemed like plenty of beef and so far it has been. I lined it up, drilled my holes and burned it in. The winch has 4 holes in the front and 4 along the back so i needed a back piece. I found a piece of angle iron laying around that was 1/4" and drilled the corresponding holes. The only stress this piece has on it is to lift up as the drum rolls, again, so far so good. Being under the bed i knew i wouldn't freespool this thing very much and you can see how the handle sticks up so i cut the handle and drilled a hole in it for a spring. The spring keeps tension on the handle in the engaged position. I had a little issue in my old blazer where i thought i had stripped out the brass ring gear in my 8k pto winch. After dissassembly i found that it had merely popped out of gear while under load.

 

Winch driveshaft. The winch is really only good for weight traction without a driveshaft so that was next. I bought a piece of 5/8" hex shaft for a driveshaft and all the yokes slide right on, not like the old round shaft with a milled keyway. The shaft runs straight out of the pto to the winch, i forget how long it is but it was enough for me to run a support bearing. I built a bracket out of some 1/4" bar stock to hold the pillow bearing and bolted it to a crossmember. Since i moved the t case back and ran a pto shaft out of it there was no way the factory tank would work so i pulled it. I thought i would be smart and put a smaller tank in it's place. I got one from a guy that came out of a gas burner, not sure of the cab configuration but noticeably shorter, and got everything form my diesel tank swapped over. I even cut it out for the larger diesel fill tube and grommet. Went to test fit it in the truck and there was no way this thing was gonna work so i scrapped it and went back to the drawing board. I decided to deal with it later.

 

Front End Demo. Wouldn't do me much good off road with the old a-arms under there so they had to go. By the time i had cut everything out i had enough soil to overlay my yard thanks to the trucks previous life as a high speed mud buggy. Nothing real spectacular to removing the old stuff, just watch out for the coil spring. Make sure it's not under load. I've got some friends that build some really big trucks, first order of business for them is to put the frame of the truck at about eye level to a giraffe and then start cuttin 'er up. Seems like a great idea to me if you're the type guy that loves to do everything off a ladder. Anyway, the guy starts cutting the a-arms off and said it whizzed by him close enough to shave and went a long way. Made me think hard about how i unloaded the coil. And also to do all my demo work as low as possible. The silver truck below is the one that nearly gave my buddy a face lift, the other two are debris from under my machine.

 

Steering Box. With everything out the way now is a good time to do steering, i wanted to use my factory box for crossover so i took it out and resealed it. Nothing tricky here, but i did drill and tap it for hydro while i had it out. Still not totally happy with the hydro assist on this thing. It works, but seems slow. I may need to upsize the fittings or the line, not high on the to do list since it does work but i've done hydro assist on a few other trucks and it worked alot better. I also started to get some money back out of my 5k parts truck, the steering arm. Pretty expensive steering arm, but at least i got to use it. The 5k parts truck had a 6" lift on it when the sadistic scab before me had it and he didn't remove the arm before it shipped. I got it bolted up and moved on to the front axle.

 

I probably spent longer thinking on this part and measuring than i did the whole rest of the project combined. I knew it would be critical to get my shackle angle right and i wanted to build in a small amount of lift. I was shooting for around 8" total and the derelict that scammed me out of my 5k finally sent me the springs right before he started avoiding my calls so i had a pretty good set of 6" skyjackers. All i had to do was build a front hanger around 2" lower than factory and i would be in business. The factory rear bumper looked like a boomerang so i knew i would be building a new one and it wouldn't be hard to build a draw tite into it so i cut up the factory draw tite and used it for my front crossmember that holds the front spring mount. I made the hangers by cutting out a piece of 1/4" plate and bending it slightly so that it welded to the end of the tubing and also tied into the frame above it. For the inner tabs i just cut a mirror image of the outer only shorter. You can see in the picture that i had toyed with the idea of using some old rear drop spring hangers designed for a chevy, but i didn't like how it was looking. I used a tractor for the heavy lifting, would have been tough to handle the 60 by hand. If i had unbolted the flat factory springs i'm certain i could have carried it into the shop, but since i work by myself i couldn't have taken a picture of it. It's a joke, please don't fire back that only a professional wrestler could do that.