Good Cheap Tow Vehicle

[SuperBuickGuy]

The gas 6.0 does ok for now. I have been trying to get the mustang more street friendly so I don't need the tow rig often.

*snicker* too easy

[Loren]

I have a buddy w/ an '07 (?) gas Chevy who has used it for towing since new, never a problem...lucky him. I just know that after the last one, if I told the wife we were getting another Chev I would have to start checking for poison in my food (she was the one driving when it burned).


More pics; if these don't come through somebody say something and I will re-load.



While I was welding stuff I decided to put a couple reinforcement angles behind the lower control arm mounts. Don't know that they're needed but I always kinda thought it looked like something more belonged there.




With that, the front drive/suspension setup can finally roll under.





The steering box needs to go forward a bit, there is a double pattern of holes on the outside frame rail which accommodate, but not on the inside so they must be drilled through and sleeved.




Track bar: The axle locating device that runs parallel to the steering drag link has, on "second-gen" '95-up, a bushing on one end and a ball joint on the other and from what I see (I only know what I read on the internet) people seem to hate them. I wouldn't know...yet...but to be safe I bought a track bar for a '04 which is the same length but uses bushing on each end. This Moog part sold under their "Problem Solver" name may have stiffer bushings than normal as well.




The bolt holes were a bit bigger than the original, I could have drilled out to match but chose to sleeve down instead, it's already 14mm which is pretty substantial. I cut a couple pieces of appropriate-thickness sheet and hammered them over a round bar.





These were pressed in with a vise, and needed a little drilling out afterward for the bolts to fit right.




Having not welded in the original ball-joint-taper-hole frame bracket I had plenty of room to put in some 3/16 HRS ones, cut on the band saw and which position the bar at the same angle as the steering. Done deal, I would hope, after I replace that temp hardware store bolt for a good one. The other side of the track bar goes to the original bracket on the axle. There are kits that adapt bushing-type bars to the taper hole also for a couple hundred bucks.




Finally, everything's in there. Blocks of wood hold the suspension at height for temporary, the springs can go in when the motor does. I am actually going to want the suspension kinda on the low side for this truck just to make getting in and out and loading stuff into the bed easy, I don't need lots of ground clearance on this one.





Now a little attention at the other end. During the months between deciding to do this and actually starting, I was watching Craigslist for anything useful and came up with this Dana 80 with 3.55 "highway" gears, and huge drum brakes for $300. That'll do, and out comes the D70 which was typically used behind automatics only.

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And, one more CL special. "C-J" from San Diego had this decent '99 club cab (rear suicide doors) that, the story was, had something dropped into the NV3500 by her boyfriend, which then turned the unusual manual transmission into ground meat when they drove it. Bummer. Then while it sat broken, the license plates came off and went onto something else for convenience...law enforcement caught it "like-that" and that car went into impound and this one went into registration purgatory although the title was clear enough. With BF now in jail for some reason (imagine that), the truck went up for $500 and I bit. Here's my nice cab with a decent interior, and hopefully the rest can be sold off to recover the bucks. That will be coming up in chapter three, chap. 1 being the chassis above, and chapter two the motor/trans work...all hoped for the month of September but -aw crap- work beckons. You know, like the paying kind.

-Loren

[STINEY]

Last picture shows, but the rest are broken.


Cool project. Love tow vehicle builds.

[JOES66FURY]

The drag links on these are a common issue. However, if you run small tires and no lift they are not as big a problem. The front end will wander and you will get a nasty vibration at speed when they wear out as that 4 link will flop all over the damn place. I would suggest rebuilding the whole front end. joints rods etc if the drag link is bad...I found that that damn thing will accelerate the wear of every moving bit on the front end once it starts shifting.

The other common point of failure are the ball joints and wheel bearings. Both are extremely easy to swap (I changed them like I change underwear)

The front bumpers, if in good condition are a commodity, you can easily sell them for a 100 or more depending on condition.

Trucks or some other show a number of years back did a locking hub swap on a second gen Ram and found a significant increase in fuel economy, something to consider if you find a conversion for a good price. I considered doing mine but ended up getting rid of it due to transmission issues.

The dashes - they are awful. There are "caps" you can get to cover them. They are plastic and fit right over your broken dash. They look like a OE piece once installed and run around 200 bucks.

Review the issues with "wild door syndrome" the AC system is vacuum operated. the vent doors will flop open and closed and sometimes they will shut completly when the engine is under load. You can sometimes fix it with a couple in line check valves or adding a chey vacuum canister to the system. It can be a real nightmare.

[STINEY]

Now all the pictures are working.

[Loren]

Re-did pics.

The original track bar was in good condition, everything else appears to be (I hope...) I am a little suspicious of the unit bearings and ball joints as the donor truck had some very positive offset wheels on it, we shall see. What would be really nice with locking hubs is that I could then use a locker in the front end as works so well in the Cherokee, I suppose I'll live with it how it is first...I read that later 2nd-gen trucks did away with the c.a.d. and just spun the ring and pinion all the time, that may be what the Trucks project started with. With the diesel, vacuum is provided by a pump that's always turning with the motor so it would be nice if I didn't see any hvac issues that had to do with that, the Chevys with stepper motors were sure a pain sometimes.

[milner351]

You make this all look so easy, you and Jim and build entire vehicles in the time it takes us mere mortals to fix one sub system.

[Loren]

If only that were true in this case...

So what happened to the truck? That was Sept. and this is February.

Ah, the reason-scuses! There's a few. A bunch of work came in and took me off of my personal projects for a while. The trans in my '95 pickup lost 5th gear, a common issue with the NV4500, and I apparently permanently damaged a shoulder fixing it. I haven't been able to even reach across a table for the ketchup if it's in the wrong place since then, I should have fixed my broken transmission jack before deciding to fix the broken truck. A couple things came along that needed funding and guess where the money came from?

It seemed to me that before I went ahead and used the motor I had planned, it should be checked over a little first. The local diesel-specialist shop mentioned two-grand as a cost to pull the head off and give it a fresh gasket as well as look everything over, with my minimal experience in diesels I handed it to them just to save some time. To start with, their two days they needed to get back to me turned into two weeks and further became a situation where I had to be going there personally every couple days to force things, a job I didn't want to have to do. So much for saving time. The mostly-helpful mechanic removed the head and found a rotten gasket and a deck that needed to be surfaced, and pulled the rest apart. The service manager, with a shop full of new trucks (odd) to make a bunch of money from, had less interest in my old 6BT than the tech and handed me an estimate for over six thousand dollars, including items such as $400 for spray cleaner and hose clamps, I have to say the logical interpretation from that was he simply didn't want his mechanic on it. I was annoyed enough I said to put it all on a pallet and give it back to me along with an agreed-on bill for disassy which is fair. Through this there was only one thing I had really asked for: Number mark the lifters! Please, number-mark the lifters, we all need to know which lobe whatever individual lifter came off of. Of-course, when I got all the parts the lifters were not marked, a few of them had a tag around them which fell off when they were moved. So these guys who are supposedly pros would have just mixed up lifters even after specifically being asked by the customer not to. That experience left me kinda glad I didn't have the shop do the work, for whatever cost. Meanwhile I can buy a new cam/lifter set now 'cause the lifter wear is not consistent across the cam and as is normal they need to either go back where they came from or the whole bit has to be replaced. The other meanwhile is, now I've got a pile...piles (plural) actually (the photo shows only a portion), of Cummins diesel engine parts and have zero experience with the motor internally. This may take a little while to figure out.



One more thing I needed for this truck was a good NV4500 manual trans/clutch setup and I have been watching CL dutifully. No, nothing, hasn't happened. Even if/when it does that will cost a couple grand minimum, and considering DMV fees will also cost nearly that, what would happen if I just welded the front of my current single cab in there in front of the "quad cab" section and used my current transmission and...current title? That is what I'm going to do. So I had truck parts spread out all over the driveway ready to go.

Next thing, our homeowner's policy changed with the old company leaving California and the new guys came along and said, guess what, "get all those truck parts out of your driveway". Hey, I'm right in the middle of a job, don't make me clean this up now...no no, they make the rules not me.

Driveway when the insurance inspector showed up:


Driveway after satisfying the insurance inspector:



Where did it all go? Packed up into a package and moved to where there is some room and insurance doesn't care. That by-the-way is in a kind-of low area near where rainwater may run through in the very-occasional heavy rain. Hello, Heavy Rain, first one in years!



To the left of the cab are parts which are being negatively affected here. Pic taken yesterday. Oh well.

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So, what's the plan now?

The engine block needs to go somewhere and have the surface decked. I need to order gaskets and misc. for $500, a cam for $500, a rebuild kit for the trans, $500, odd parts such as new oil cooler and other, add a few more $500's. A better clutch if I want, $750. I picked up a set of factory 18" wheels I like, but they need spacers made as the offset's different, and since I don't like aluminum spacers on trucks I get to machine some steel ones.

Finally, using my current cab will mean I'm without a truck for whatever duration that swapping things around requires, so I need to wait for the last thing to do that, and maybe have a backup truck. Our Cherokee won't do, as it can't handle tall items and cannot pull a trailer. Maybe I'll fix an El Camino, there's a couple around here to choose from.

So why again do all this work? I want a quad-cab (i.e., rear half-doors) I don't have to smog certify every two years and since they mostly didn't make those until after the smog requirement happened, I get to put one together myself. The costs, while significant, are still much lower than buying a newer truck. Plus, I guess this is just the way I do things.

Updates when something actually happens again. Really, for a few days putting a motor-trans together, some welding and assembly and paint, I should still get a good truck for a low cost, meaning some fraction of the twenty-grand it would cost me to get the equivalent off of CL. Optimism...in the face of some serious project creep. We shall see.

[DanStokes]

Loren, I reblocked one (a 24 valve but pretty similar) and they're pretty much like a gas engine as far as a rebuild goes - just bolts. With your skills I wouldn't expect it to be much of a challenge. The only thing to be aware of (assuming similarities between the ISB and the 6BT) - there will be little plastic thingies in the gasket kit that look sort of like molys for putting screws into drywall. I didn't know what they were for but learned later that those are the piston squirters. On the ISB they go in the connecting rods and point an oil spray at the bottom of the piston crown. I didn't remove the old ones and the engine ran perfectly but if you rework the rods you'll want to be aware of those little gems. Interesting thing was that I had the factory manual and there was no mention of the squirters.

Dan

[Russell]

Bummer on all the bad luck, hopefully the flood didn't mess up to much. I had a 1998 12 valve quad cab. They might not have sold them in CA but the are out there. Normally over priced....

https://onslow.craigslist.org/cto/d/camp-lejeune-cummins-2500/6813106148.html

[DanStokes]

Bummer on all the bad luck, hopefully the flood didn't mess up to much. I had a 1998 12 valve quad cab. They might not have sold them in CA but the are out there. Normally over priced....

https://onslow.craigslist.org/cto/d/...813106148.html

I don't think mine's worth nearly that but Truck IS a 2 WD.

Dan

[Deaf Bob]

Here I am thinking I got bad luck...

Piston squirters. Love them! Retrofitted 2 small blocks in derby cars with them.. Never seized a motor or came close to heat seize slow cranking one..
Bad part is if squirters are too big, might not hit the piston bottom ( example: lose a nozzle) and have lower oil pressure

You'll get it done!

See on the news where your area is pretty wet!
Bro in law is in Riverside.

[Loren]

Well, the engine won't know whether it had bad luck or good luck going together as long as everything winds up right.

Russell I'd have loved to have that truck you did. We do have inspections on '98s though...'97 is last year without according to https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/?1...dmv/vr/smogfaq The one in your link seems like about what they go for here, but when I did find my dream 4x4 longbed manual-trans truck they wanted over 20 grand...not in my budget!

Dan, thanks for info on squirters. I don't have the factory manual, and the Chilton's is kinda light on info, I wish there was a version of the classic "How to Hot Rod Small-Block Chevys" for Cummins motors. I'll have to get something more, anyhow. I'm not finding squirters on the rods here...maybe they're on the main webs? I'll find out when I get into it I'm sure. I see aluminum ones are available for people who don't trust plastic, also.

Nine pound piston-and-rod set. Check out the wrist pin thickness. With all that, intake/exhaust valves (not shown) just look like regular-old little car stuff.

[Shep48COE]

Those Cummins were Loud. Your never going to a drive thru without shutting it off for the speaker.

[Dan Barlow]

Wow , you guys pay a high price for sunshine . I love going thru this with you ( by pics and text ) but glad your taking the lead !