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Thread: My Little Red Wagon

  1. #1

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    My Little Red Wagon

    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.
    IMG_2180.jpgIMG_2181.jpgIMG_2189.jpgIMG_2182.jpgIMG_2183.jpgIMG_2185.jpgIMG_2184.jpgIMG_2186.jpgIMG_2187.jpg
    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.

  2. #2

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    do you like the Federal Couragia M/T's?

  3. #3

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    Geezer approves The seat retrim looks awesome. And good work on adapting the the A/C to the TD engine. This might be worth a write up by itself. Could do with some sound deadener in the cab (just an opinion) It will kill off the vibration in the cab panels and make it more bearable in the heat and cold (it'll improve sound quality too). Nice work all round.

  4. #4

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    Thanks guys! ragragtimetime, the Couragias are great off road, but they are as load as the truck when you're going down the highway, I can't complain too much because they actually came with the truck brand new, so I'll use them till they wear out. As far as the AC goes, I'll just say it's great that my dad is a machinist, he's the only reason I've been able to do so much on this truck as easy as I have.

  5. #5

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    That's a great looking truck. Very nice work. Any chance we could get a couple more pictures of the bumper? I'm hoping to build something similar for my truck some day.

  6. #6

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    image1 (1).jpgimage2 (1).jpgimage3.jpgimage4.jpgimage5.jpg
    Sorry for the delay, but here are those pictures of the bumper we cot out 2 plates(the first picture) that had the profile we wanted the bumper to have, and just took some 2 inch angle steel to make the bracket to mount it with. Then we took the steel plates to our local metal working shop to break it over to the angle to match. I had made a cardboard template of the bumper to get it where I wanted before we started welding stuff together, so I used that as a template to mark my cuts on the steel plates so we could get the sides and corner pars you see. The tow hooks are just held on by 2 pieces of 1x2 inch flat bar stock that runs the length of the 2 brackets to connect it as strong as we could to the mounting point. It would kinda suck to be hooked up to someone to be towed and they tear my tow hooks off. Then for the light pods I cut out a template that was the same shape as the lights, angled it to mark the bumper so we could position the lights facing straight ahead, and then cut it. We just cut-and-checked the pieces that go straight back until we were satisfied with the way it fit.

  7. #7

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    I've been looking around on other threads about the Montero upper control arm swap, but I've seen a couple of different answers for what years work. So what year of Montero do I need to get the control arms for?

  8. #8

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    That looks great. The mounts are more simple than I expected. I have a bad tendency to overthink things. Thanks for the photos. This gives me some ideas

  9. #9




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    92 to 95 Montero, not the Montero sport.
    Pennyman1
    The best Dodge that Dodge never made
    Living the D-50 lifestyle since 1980

  10. #10

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    Great,thanks! And that is good for a few inches of lift, correct?

  11. #11




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    1 - 2 inches of lift, yes
    Pennyman1
    The best Dodge that Dodge never made
    Living the D-50 lifestyle since 1980

  12. #12

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    You should take a picture of your AC bracket that is holding your compressor. I need to build one too.

  13. #13

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    A diesel swap into a second gen. Can't say I had really thought about it until now. I like it! Any issues switching fuel over? Also what mpg are you seeing?

  14. #14

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    It really wasn't too bad to do the swap. Body mounts and bell housings were the same, all we did on the fuel system was pull out the factory fuel pump from the tank and get rid of the gas fuel filter. We did put in a small lift pump, but we need to upgrade it, and a diesel fuel filter. For the electronics we have the glow plugs off of a push button switch, the fuel shutoff run through the ignition, and a wire to the alternator, that's it. Right now I'm only seeing about 22 mpg, but I think that there is something on my injection pump causing that. I'll post a picture of that and the AC bracket tomorrow, but I think I may have accidentally got a California spec injection pump.

  15. #15

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    image2-1.jpg
    Here is the adapter plate we made for the factory condenser bracket. It is really just a 3/8 inch plate that we cut and drilled to line up with the holes in the block. We milled off as much as we could from the factory bracket to get it as close as possible to the block, but even then we had to redo the AC lines on the condenser because they were hitting the steering box.

    Now a question:
    image3-1.jpg
    The little switch directly above the throttle cable, with the blue wire coming out of the back of it, what is it?

  16. #16

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    Quote Originally Posted by dancinggecko View Post
    Now a question:
    image3-1.jpg
    The little switch directly above the throttle cable, with the blue wire coming out of the back of it, what is it?
    I'm going to take an educated punt at this. It looks like it is only triggered on full or near full throttle so it might be a rev limiter. Either that or a solenoid to enrich fuel supply so it doesn't run lean. Diesel gurus will jump in on this one.

  17. #17

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    I know it's not a rev limiter. If it is it is definitely not working, but I heard somewhere that the California spec pumps had a solenoid switch of some sort on the fuel return, I just don't know if that's what it is.
    Last edited by dancinggecko; 09-25-2017 at 08:21 PM.

  18. #18

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    If you're game - try bridging the circuit with the engine running and see what it does. If it's hanging off the engine and the throttle is meant to trigger it, there shouldn't be a risk of doing any damage to it.

  19. #19

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    This thread about a 4D55T Ranger mentions a full throttle switch.

    http://www.therangerstation.com/foru...ad.php?t=85432

  20. #20

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    What size are those tires?

    Do you get any rubbing?

  21. #21

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    They're only 235/75-R15, just a hair over the factory size.

  22. #22

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    UPDATE
    Hey there everyone, sorry its been so long since I've updated this thread, been busy at school and all sorts of good stuff.
    Since I last posted a few things decided to let go. After 2 blown head gaskets I discovered that the brand-new Kinugawa turbo had eaten its oil seals and bearings, and was throwing so much oil into the intake that it was trying to hydro-lock the motor. I thought that we were pushing too much boost through there and went and bought a set of head studs to fix it. With that turbo shot I had to go back to the factory TC05 until I can find a bigger replacement that I like. Either way its got a set of studs on there now, so head gaskets should not be a problem any more.
    Another thing I found was that my injectors had bit the dust. After we got the head gasket replaced the truck wasn't running worth a crap, so we pulled the injectors and tested them. Every single one had a screwy spray pattern. Got a new set of nozzles in (after about a 2 week delay from the snow) and should be able to get them in in the next couple of days.
    In more pleasant news I got a soft bed cover for the old girl. Got one for an old Toyota pickup, it was the perfect width, and without my toolbox it would probably have been the perfect length too. We trimmed it down to fit on the bed with the toolbox and it looks great. I'll post some pictures as soon as I can

  23. #23

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    Also, thank you to Jeff V. for posting the part numbers for the ARP studs for the 4D55

  24. #24

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    Resurrecting my old thread. It has been a long time since I've touched this one, but I finally had the chance to put the truck on the dyno this past weekend, and I was more than a little happy at the results. Sorry for the low quality picture.

  25. #25

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    Hmm...dont see the link.

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