How not to do an engine swap (my 12 valve Cummins into 97 F-350 thread)

TWeatherford

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My machinist advised against sleeving. The way the cylinders wore he is concerned about there being enough material there to support the sleeve properly. And truth is, I'd easily put $3500 into a rebuild with machine work and quality parts (not the lower quality $800 rebuild kits out there). And it'll take me a few months to do it.

I think I made a good deal yesterday. I found a 1997 2500 with 262,000 miles on it, with suspension damage. The guy that owns it is parting it out. He's owned it since new, its not turned up at all. The only work that has been done to it is a water pump and front gearcase seal. I can see the factory paint on all the fasteners and did a vehicle history report so I believe it. I ran it, did a blowby test, and it tests right in line with new specs. More money than I want to spend, but I'm getting the turbo, IP and most other accessories, so I'll have some spares. I have to pull it, so next weekend I'll be renting a truck, loading up all my tools, head to Phoenix and grab it.
 

TWeatherford

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It’s been a long time since I updated this. I’ve been really busy with life, work, and working on the truck and didn’t want to take time to write or upload pictures.

I went to pick up the engine I bought in Phoenix. Got down there at 8 am in a rented F-150. I had no idea what was in store for me. I’ve never had heatstroke before, and it was only 85 degrees that day, but in early April I wasn’t at all used to the heat and got really sick. Besides that going from a running truck in Phoenix, to a pulled engine on my garage floor, with 5 hours driving, is a lot for a day’s work when I’m unfortunately used to sitting in an office. A buddy helped me, without his help I would have had to come back later. Once I got it loaded I was really concerned – this engine is tall when sitting in a little half ton pickup. I took it really slow and easy on the way up the hill and had no problems. If I had it to do over again I would definitely take the oil pan and oil pickup off, and let it sit about 8” lower.

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TWeatherford

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I decided not to paint the new engine. The shiny paint I put on the last one took a lot of time and effort, and certainly didn’t help it run any better. This one was pretty clean, just 270,000 miles of minor oil leaks and road grime on it. So I cleaned it up, did a complete reseal (except the head gasket), put in some new freeze plugs, and put it in the truck.

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I bought a Fumoto oil drain valve. I’ve wanted one for all my past vehicles, and decided to finally get one. I cross drilled it so that the holes in the oil pan drain line up, so I can get that last pint or so out. As you can see, its conceivably possible to rip it off, but the axle protects it pretty well.

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I bought a fancy new Valair clutch. It’s a 13” organic, good for 350 hp / 700 ft*lb. They put it together for me with the flywheel machined out and a Ford pilot bearing installed, and a Ford throwout bearing. I figured I would just spend the money and have something that works the first time instead of trying to piece something together and saving some money. Well that didn’t exactly work out so well.

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Went to install it, wouldn’t install all the way. After pulling it and installing it about 6 times, I figured out that it was the input shaft hitting the pilot bearing. I could have had the flywheel machined 0.130” deeper for the pilot bearing, or make a spacer. I decided to make a spacer. I thought about drawing it up in SolidWorks and having a shop just cut it out of ¼” plate, but decided to do it the hard way with some 2” and 3” ¼” steel, and my new welder. That was a miserable experience. I ended up shocking myself with my welder (long story), and using up a lot of grinding discs, flap wheels, bending a 5/8” drill bit, finished up the holes by melting them with my welder, and making a horrible mess. But I ended up with a spacer, ¼” thick, with all the holes lined up, not warped, and for $40. So I rented a transmission jack for the 4th time and in it went, and the ¼” didn’t mess up my driveshafts.

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The last little irritating hurdle was I needed the wastegate arm to be 90 degrees for the setup I have, the stock wastegate would hit my AC evaporator. I wanted to cut it and weld it myself. I’m not a welder, just a guy with a welder in his hand, so I was worried about goofing it up on the 0.100” metal. I did a lot of practicing, and was finally ready. As I was setting it up, I realized that a magnet wouldn’t stick to the piece I was going to weld… stainless! So I bought some fancy rod and did some more practicing, and got a nice weld. I had to grind it down a bit for clearance, but its solid.

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I got it all back together and it fired right up. Didn’t fill my garage with smoke like the last one. Adjust the idle up a bit, and went for a drive. I’ve been daily driving it for the last few weeks, and have put almost 1000 miles on it. I had a minor issue with a power steering leak, and I’ve got a small but irritating oil leak – pretty sure it’s the oil pan gasket.

I had to do some modifications to my clutch master cylinder pushrod, repairing some more previous owner idiocy, but now it works well and engages where I want it to. My fuel gauges don’t work, which is irritating, but I’ll be pulling the flatbed off to mount it properly so I’ll deal with them then. So far I’ve been getting 17-18 mpg which I’m very happy with.

I’m not running a fan. The mechanical fan only has about ¾” clearance, which seems to work fine. I am debating on running electrics though. Without a fan I have no problems at all. It’s gotten a little warm while going real slow off road, but at 25 mph or faster it stays right at 175-185 F.

Last night I put new Bilstein front shocks on it. The old ones were Fox remote reservoir shocks, which I don’t think were right for the truck. They didn’t feel like they were doing anything. It feels a lot better now with the new ones.
 

junk

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Cool Glad the new motor is working out well so far. Thanks for letting us know how it's going.

Thanks
Jeremy
 

PMDant

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This may be bringing this back to life but I am glad you got your swap done. I have an 84 F-250 that I did the swap on when the IDI blew up last November. Took 9 weeks and was rushed because its my DD.

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Took some interesting mock up but went Cummins nv4500 and np241 and made the brand exchange at the drive shafts and electrical. Inverted a dodge intercooler and just slid everything else together as clean as possible. Helped to have a wiring harness from the Dodge. Had a couple shops around Colorado help with the power steering hose and IC piping and exhaust. Kept everything else as normal as possible.
 
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BrandonMag

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Any updates on this? What's your long-term fuel mileage? How do you like it now that you've put some miles on it?
 

TWeatherford

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I like it pretty well. I still have a lot of little things to sort out but for now I'm just driving it (I need tires - the ones on it are not balanced well at all, hook up my AC compressor, do an exhaust to remove the drone at around 2000 rpm and a lot more little stuff). I just recently I put 4k governor springs in it, slid the AFC housing forward, slid the fuel plate forward, and tuned it so it doesn't smoke. Man, what a difference. Plenty of power, I didn't realize what I was missing out on. I took it elk hunting last fall down some roads a crewcab dually didn't belong on, added some scratches but did fine. I've taken it on some longer trips too. Hills that had my 6.9 IDI turbo in 2nd and 3rd gear, trying not to overheat or let the exhaust temps get too high - I just do the speed limit in 5th without even looking at the gauges.

I'm getting 16-18 mpg, maybe a little more. Its hard to figure, because my fuel gauge doesn't work. Also the retarted previous owner installed vents in the tanks. Vents that, when you fill the tank all the way, dump fuel on the ground while you're filling. So I don't fill them all the way up to avoid that, and don't get very good averages for fuel mileage. I've still got to fix that. I'm gearing up to pull the flatbed off, re do the fuel level senders, tank vents, and make new bed mounts and re-wire the flatbed.
 

TWeatherford

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Well photobucket is going the way of mugshotz and messing up my pictures. I'll try to get around to fixing them, but it may be a while. My wife and I now have a 2.75 year old, an 18 month old, and a 1 month old. And I'm finishing up a fairly major remodel of an old farmhouse we bought, finishing out a shop in the barn, and trying to manage the weeds and cows on a little farm.

The truck has been great. I had to rebuild the transfer case recently, and get inventive due to excessive case wear where the shift shaft goes through the aluminum case. That caused the case to slip into neutral with no way to get it back in, and caused me to need my first tow (fortunately I was only a few miles from home, father in law with his truck and a strap was all I needed). Beyond that, I've only done oil changes, and put almost 40,000 miles on it. I'm sitting at 336k on the truck, did the swap around 297k, and the engine had around 270k so around 310k now. I drive it 90 miles daily, get around 16-17 mpg. I've pulled a few loads of hay, stock trailers, random gooseneck loads of block and concrete. The bed is nice - I've had 4-6,000 lbs of concrete and block, recently hauled a 3 cylinder diesel tractor home on it. It's nice to have somewhere solid to strap to.
 

FordGuy100

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Its good to hear from you! I understand on the life being busy part. I also hate photobucket.

Lets see more pictures!
 

Greg5OH

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COngrats on getting everything running properly. Cummins swapping my crewcab was also the best thing I have ever done for it. Next up is swapping the 91 body to a 79 body.
 

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