Finally made enough headway on my truck to make it interesting, and thought I'd do a build thread to get some opinions on the way things are going. So here is my baby. A '91 Ram 50, 4x4, that we did a 4d55t swap on last year.
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Been working on the truck over the past year, and the motor off and on over the past two almost. On the truck we have done the engine swap, we gutted the factory wiring harness and got rid of everything related to the 2.4L engine. So at this point there is no computer in it. We just painted it back in the summer, back to the factory red with a few extra details:). We built the front bumper out of 1/8 inch plate, everything is wired up, and we have everything set up for a winch, but that will be dealt with later.
It has the 4.222 final drive gears, which with the diesel in it meaning a lot of one-wheel-peels, so I found a factory LSD out of a Raider in a junkyard to drop in the rear. Other than that the drive train is as-is from the factory.
On the interior we have replaced the factory bench seat with factory buckets that we reupholstered. I also made a center console after I gave up at finding a factory one. I've got a piece I'm working on to go up around the shifters and under the dash out of aluminum tread plate, but it's still in the works.
I've had a little bit of fun with the stereo system. I'm running two 10 inch Rockford Fosgate Punch shallow-mount subs off of an old-school 400W Fosgate Punch amp. My dad and I built the boxes ourselves to fit over the transmission tunnel and line up with the center console we made. I'm also running two 6x9 Fosgate 3-way speakers in the back and two 4 inch circles up front in the dash off of an Alpine radio and a 180W Alpine amp. Suffice it to say the little truck's stereo sounds good.
With the diesel in it I wanted to have a little closer eye on whats going on with the engine, so I got ISSPRO Boost and EGT gauges that I mounted in a custom pillar gauge pod. We just took a universal 2-gauge pod and molded it in with bondo.
As far as the engine goes it is a 4D55T out of an '84 Ram 50, we fully rebuilt it, new sleeves, pistons, and everything. The factory pump was bad, but we managed to get our hands on an '83 injection pump. Replaced the factory TD04-9B with a Kinugawa TDO4HL-15T, had to do a little fab work to get the wastegate actuator mounted up, but we got it all plumbed up right. At this point the engine is stock other than the turbo upgrade. We did get a bigger exhaust put on there, but its only a 2.5 inch. At some point I'll probably redo it with a 3 inch exhaust but for now this is working well.
It originally had the 2.4L motor in it, and while it was we had the AC blowing nice and cold. When we swapped engines we couldn't find any of the diesel AC components, or even a part number to cross reference other compressors, so we made an adapter plate to fit the compressor off of the 2.4 on the diesel. Now I've still got the factory AC, but on the diesel motor.
That's where she sits now. I'd like to upgrade the brakes all the way around using the bigger discs from a Montero, and I'm contemplating the control arm swap to get a little bit of lift. As for the engine the new turbo has plenty of air, I just need the fuel to match, so I'll be looking for some injectors and a 4D56 roller rocker head too. May or may not do the 12mm plunger in the injection pump, just depends on if I'll need that much more fuel. I also want to do water injection, EGT's get a little too toasty for my taste on the interstate, so that is definitely something I'm looking in on. But that's where I'm at now, I'd love to see what everyone thinks.
