71 Ford F250 with a Cummins

[lehtow]

Well I thought post my project though it pretty much complete. The truck is a 71 F-250 camper special that was bought new by my grandfather and was why first vehicle. My grandfather used it mostly to haul his camper, so most of the time it sat in the garage. We'll back in 2004 I decided it was time to do at least a partial restoration and deal with the rust that was starting to appear. It was a slow process that I would only work on it durning the weekends. Finally last year I got my own place to work on it so most of the work has been done in the past year. It was just going to be clean up everything and paint everything, then last summer I stumbled on to a good deal on a 91 dodge diesel and decided to do a conversion. I did pretty much everything myself with the exception of shortening the drive shaft. This was my first time painting a vehicle and it ended up turning out pretty good. The truck is now powered by a 5.9 Cummins turbo diesel with a 5 speed manual transmission. I finished up the truck about 4 weeks ago and on my trip last week to Wisconsin I averaged 21.5 mpg so I'm quite pleased with the conversion. Sorry for the long post but I thought someone might get some idea from my post since most of the repowers I see are 4x4s. I'll post some more picture in my gallery

Wayne

[taylor351]

Beautiful truck.

Wish I had the time, place, ambition,.....

Keith

[Thunderfoot]

to the site!

Nice looking truck and well done! you did good on the paint job as black is not that easy to paint

[averagef250]

Looking great! What gears are you running in the rear? 21.5 seams on the low side to me for a gen1 12 valve in a 5000 pound truck.

If you ever decide to intercool it the 90's F-700/800 radiators and intercoolers make a pretty nice swap into these trucks without cutting the grill.

[lehtow]

Dustin

I'm running 3.73 gears. I could probably pick up a few more mpg with a gear change, but I kind of like it how it is now. It merges with traffic pretty good.

[RedneckTexan]

Nice truck man! It sure came out nice!

[HRDROKN]

Nice job

What tranny are you running?

[rattlecan]

That is a nice ride! I bet you could pull a house of the foundation with that motor set up!

[hardtailjohn]

Beautiful looking job!!
John

[averagef250]

You might try taller gears if you ever get the chance. The more you load these buggers, the more power they make, the better the mileage and the longer they last.

My 4BT powered 71 is around the 180HP400TQ mark non-intercooled right now and even being 2/3 the engine of yours, sitting a foot taller and weighing 5900 empty it's geared taller with 4.10's and 35" rubber and it's happy at 55. It'd be perfect with 3.73's I think, but I may go as high as 3.54's with it. It gets 26 MPG average right now.

I'm definitely going 3.54's and 35" rubber with the 12 valve in my '70.

[ToughOldFord]

Nice work! Looks good!

[lehtow]

Thanks everyone for the complements

HRDROKN
I'm running a Getrag 360, which seems to do fine. I had to do a little work on it before putting it in. It was popping out of fourth gear, someone had shimmed it from the front causing everything to be shifted to the back. Eventually it wore down the 3-4 shift fork causing it to pop out of fourth gear.

Dustin
With your 4BT did you have to make a custom adapter plate? I'm not familiar with the M5R2, did you have to do any modification to it to handle the torque?

[averagef250]

The getrags are decent trannies. If you use good oil and keep them a little overful they do fine.

I really didn't have to make anything custom for the 4BT. Many of the 4BT's out there come with adapter plates to mate them up to a small block Ford manual tranny.

I just put bearings and brass in the M5R2. I have done a few of these 4BT/M5R2 swaps and the M5R2 holds up well. I did manage to split 3/4 slider in the M5R2 in my 71, but this particular transmission had a really hard life and didn't suprise me that it broke (I push it pretty hard in this truck too). I quick fixed it for the time being, but have a small block ZF to swap in place when I get the chance. I really like the M5R2 close ratios though so I'm on the lookout for a ZF diesel gearset to swap in to my small block case.