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Hacksters Crew Cab first gen Cummins

232K views 353 replies 82 participants last post by  Adamants 
#1 ·
So my tow rig for the last three years has been a 1993 w250 that has racked up 249,000 miles on it. It has been hands downt the most dependable, hadest working truck I have ever owned by a long shot....even better than the 07 cummins I bought off the lot brand new in late 06.

Truck is all turned up with timing bump, denny t fuel pin wh1c with 14 cm housing, leveling kit and 35's with 2" dom tube bumpers. Its a standard cab long bed and I love it.

Here is the dirty old girl in all her glory, doing what she usually does, towing the car trailer around with some project on the trailer.



Well, have sold off a few cool cars in the past few months in order to build the rig that I have wanted for the last few years. A crew cab short bed cummins 5 speed with some one tons under it.

So the search began for the right truck......well more like trucks right? After lots of searching I found a 1993 extra cab long bed w250 with a cummins and a 5 speed 4 wheel drive. The truck had was in an accident but I really was not interested in much of the body. Not to mention I got it for a good price. So I loaded up the trailer and headed up into the sticks to pick it up.

Two first gens...happy times.







Not much to look at but good running gear with pod's denny t fuel pin kdp fixed and a rebuit getrag.

So this will be the donor drivetrain...

I brought it home on Friday afternon and could not get the tools out fast enough.



Had a little help from a friend but we made pretty quik work, the cab was entirely stripped of everything, harness was all unplugged and removed in one piece, it was in great shape with just a little bit of hackery to clean up but nothing too bad.







Cut out a bunch of the firewall so that I would hopefully be able to weld in the right opening for the heater box and the firewall harness plug.
 
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#30 · (Edited)
Thanks guys..

No chance of keeping it long bed, just doesnt interest me. I drive my trucks, drive them to work too and occasionally need to drive them downtown or take some customers out on the town, not to mention the long wheelbase will just make it harder to get this thing out in the snow.

Good day of progress sort of....

Got started early by starting a little bit of cleanup in the driveway, there is crap everywhere, tools, beer cans, pizza boxes and tons of car parts.

Then picked up some 14 ga sheetmetal for the impending floor board work, some .023 wire and tips for the welder and refilled a tank of shielding gas in case we get some good progress.

Came back home and got to work, removed the last bits from the firewall, installed the new manual pedal assembly (Thanks Asher) cleaned and cleaned the firewall, found the cracks in the cowl, drilled the ends of them and welded them all up, also found a little bit of rust in the cowl area so we made some patch panels and got to work welding them up. With the firewall all cleaned up, I da'd the entire firewall, cowl area and welded up any unused holes.

Got some high build primer on the old girl at this point.



Sanded down the primer and got it pretty darn flat for a firewall that you will never see. Cleaned it up one more time, got the seam sealer on everywhere that needed it.



Bagged up the truck finished masking it and got to shooting. Omni, single stage is what I picked up. Not high end but descent paint.

Loaded up some paint in the gun and got to shooting. Paint laid down nice and flat, nothing in the paint and it looks great, good shine especially for being shot outside.



Too bad the color is all wrong.....crap. Guess Ill be scuffing this again and reshooting when I get the right color on Monday.

Tomorrow I think I am going to try and tackle the rear floor board areas to get some clearance for the extra cab area to clean the frame.

Still got lots of work to do...More tomorrow =)

Sean
 
#35 ·
Good Day today.

Worked on the crew cab cab measuring and measuring some more, then took the cut off wheel to just about the entire floor of the old girl and ended up with this.





Then we got to work removing the stock body mounts and front bed mounts on the extra cab frame, that was a bit of a pain but not horrible.

Then grabbed some lunch and came back with a chain fall and set the cab on the frame for the first time. Amazingly, it dropped right on with no issues, cuts were spot on with my measurements.





Total chaos at my place today, the boss (wife) made us clean up this afternoon so we used the buggy to move the crew cab to the side yard.

Here you can see how I am boxing everything back in, made templates and cut them all out with the plasma. You can see that its not too tight, but it is snug.



Top plate all tacked in and ready to weld it all out tomorrow.





Hope to get some paint tomorrow and reshoot the firewall so I can get the cab on for good tomorrow night or Tuesday morning.

Oh, also got the top of the fuel tank modified to clear the crew cab.
 
#36 ·
As for the cracks in the Cowl, Mopar used to sell reinforcing plates to help stiffen up the cowl at the base of the A-pillar.

I'm not sure if they are still available:
AR 4797018 Cowl Reinforcement-Left
AR 4797019 Cowl Reinforcmmt-Right


You might want to reinforce the area before you put the truck back together, it would be quick and easy now with the front clip off.
 
#37 · (Edited)
Ill check into those reinforcement plates and see if I can still locate them. Thanks for the pointer Murph

Went down to Industrial Finishes this morning and took the cowl with me down there. They had the right code and when we put the paint chip up to the cowl, it was very close, but the paint was not. I left the cowl panel with them and they got it really close and did not charge me for the paint and appologized for the mismatch.

Good bunch of people there!!

Got back home after a half day or so of work and lifted the cab up again, scuffed the firewall up, cleaned and taped up the truck again and shot some paint on the firewall again. Little too much reducer so I ended up with a run behind the block so no big deal, Paint was a bit thin going on so I layered on a few coats.






Looks Waaaaay better and the color match is pretty darn close.

Finished welding on the floor boards, you can see what it looks like from underneath.



Ran some seam sealer all around the welds and seams to seal everything up and shot some bedliner coating on the raw metal to clean it up, protect it and give it a somewhat finished look.





Found some rust on the floors, so I need to cut that out and make some patch panels for those spots.

Sean
 
#39 ·
Yeah, planning on running the stock rear seat, have them restuffed with new foam and recovered to match the new front seats, more than likely Master Craft Baja rs or Beards for the front, Thinking Black cloth and tan stitching.

My typical ocd kicked in yesterday morning and I welded up all the holes in the inner fender wells, sanded them down, shot with high build primer sanded em and shot them with some color, they are far from perfect but they are not bad for the inner fenderwells.




Cut out the rest of the rusty patches on the floor (Keep in mind I was told there was no rust on this truck.) Cut out some nice new 14 ga and welded it back in.

I used some rust killer and sealer on the floor and it appears as though it ahs done the job.





I got the clutch master cylinder bracket all mounted up to the firewall, stabbed the brake booster through and dealt with the emergency brake cable as well.

Got some double foil sided insulation for the firewall and glued some of that down before I started to run the harness and install the dash.



Tore the heater box down for cleaning and replacement of the heater core.....I was a bit suprised to find this mess in front of the evaporator.





I started to clean up all the wiring in the engine bay yesterday but really need to get the heater box installed. I need to build my own gasket for the firewall and am struggling with what to do there...any ideas?

Sean
 
#40 ·
The rats nest of debris is common. That's pretty much everything that has fallen through the cowl vents and gotten sucked up into the heater box. There are threads over on RCC about cleaning out the "suitcase" that deal with cleaning out the mess. It can be dangerous if it gets piled up and touches the blower resistor and causes a fire.

As for a gasket, I'd just use some of the foam insulation you can buy in rolls that's sticky on one side. Similar to what everyone used years ago to seal camper shells and whatnot. You should be able to find something of a suitable thickness at a store, especially with the change of seasons.
 
#41 ·
Yup, the pile-o-leaves is common. My 91 had it BAD since it was parked under an oak tree for the 10 years the PO had it. My Ramcharger had a mild heater box fire out in the woods that was extinguished by pouring sodas and beer into the box through the resister hole with a bag turned funnel :eek: Good times.
Travis..
 
#42 ·
So started the morning with just a raw dash..... big job ahead of me.

Started by cleaning off all the old gasket from the heater box, then used armaflex cut to fit around the box. It turned out, well ok, not extatic about it but it will work.

Then put the bulkhead connector in the firewall and stated to lay out the harness. Soon found out I had missed a few items like the hole in the cowl for the heater resistor. Cut that out and got the ball rolling with the rest.

By the end of the day I ended up with this...







I am pretty pleased with how the dash came together, It was not a nice dash by any means and will probably get changed out down the road.

I cleaned and scuffed all the dash pieces with wax and grease remover and a red scotch brite pad. It was grey before and well you can see its nice and black now.

Somehow, I ended up with an all black dash bezel and it was actually in descent shape!!

Cleaned up the firewall a bit more, ordered up new pos and neg battery cables and they should be here in the morning.

Don't know for sure, but might be able to see if the old girl will fire up again tomorrow.

Sean
 
#45 ·
Well.... I am trying to get as much done this week as I can, besides you know how I am with my projects =) You can stop by any time this week if you wanna see it in person :grinpimp:

Today was a frustrating day, got up and dealt with some small issues, headlight switch and panel then found that the 79 emergency brake pedal would not work with the 93 dash and the 93 pedal will not work with the 79 mounts, so a little re-engineering a new hole in the 93 pedal assembly and a spacer behind it and that was good to go.

Also picked up the new positive and negative battery cables from the dodge dealership, was shocked at the price but very much happy with the fact that they had them and they were an exact replica of the stock ones.

Chris came over and helped out for many hours today....Thanks CJ!!

We worked on the damn core support for hours. I should have bought a new one for the 93 and transfered on the early headlight buckets...

Used the 79 core support and transfered all the brackets onto it from the wrecked core support on the 93. This was a ton of work, not to mention fixing some rust damage.

Dont recommend it to anyone but its what I had and it all worked out in the end.







Shot it in the normal Hackster spray booth (the driveway =) Pulled it in the garage and saw that it has runs galore....even though I was laying down the paint very thin so I need to re look at my mixture and see if its something I was doing wrong.

 
#48 ·
I was wondering how long until someone asked about the Racoon...:p

Its my dog, he's a miniature schnauzer that was scratching when the photo was taken and I totally agree it looks like a racon on a leash.

So something happened with either the temperature outside or the mix on the paint and the paint on the core support ran like crazy and never setup. So Friday morning when I got up, the paint was a nasty sticky horrible mess. Tried to dry it but zero luck with that so I tried to sand it and it just went downhill from there.

So I took the whole core support over to Jon at Soda Blast in Tigard and he did a great job of cleaning up the mess I had been so successful in making.

Got the core support back friday night hung it in the garage, cleaned it, primed, sanded, scuffed it and heated it all up nice and warm as well as the garage.

Shot more paint on it and this time it turned out great.

Saturday morning, paint was dry so I was finally able to begin the reassembly process on the frontend. Inner fenders, trimmed for future fender cutting and core support mounted up.







The fenders and all the other stuff was next, so I got to mounting stuff.

Here is where I ended the day early as we had a wedding to go to.



I also spent some time cleaning up the engine since the engine bay was starting to look descent. Cleaned and painted the engine with some high temp black paint, pulled the top valve cover cover and shot that tan and re painted the cummins in red and used some stove brite on the exhaust and turbo exhaust side.



Other than figuring out why it wont start, and getting a radiator installed, the engine bay is pretty much buttoned up.

Sean
 
#49 ·
So is the intercooler going to fit ok behind the stock grille? It was my understanding that there wasn't enough room between the core support and the grill for it to fit without some fabrication.
 
#50 ·
Yep, intercooler fits fine behind the stock grille, I did have to trim the very top lip of the trim piece below the grill with the turn signals in it though, and when I say little, two notches probably 3" long and 1/4" to clear the tanks on the intercooler.

There is little hope of the AC Condenser fitting up there now though, although I do have some ideas of how I could possibly make it work with the grille and trim panel all playing together nicely.

I am missing some parts from the interior, anyone have any good sources for first gen cummins parts or have a parts truck nearby?

Sean
 
#51 ·
Ah, maybe the swap I am thinking of wanted to keep the condenser in there somewhere. Maybe there is hope for me yet. I've always thought a Cummins powered '74 model would be pretty awesome with the stock grille.
 
#52 ·
Went out this morning and had it in my head to get this thing running. A few minutes of troubleshooting had me at a bad clutch safety switch. With that jumpered out, it fired right up!! I was pretty excited.

So it runs now to finish it up and make it drive,

Picked up lower radiator hose, heater hose, vacuum hose and some other misc bits and installed those this morning along with the grill headlights and started to go through the light wiring as I have no parking lights or turn signals but lost interest in that when Asher showed up.

We turned to some exhaust fun, ran the 4" Diamond Eye exhaust out the back, descent system but a bit close to the transfer case no matter how you run it, 4" seems big on this truck.

Put the seat back in it, got some loose ends tied up and moved the old girl for the first time...barely fits in the garage door.



Clutch feels great, tranny good so far and the brakes and steering are nice and tight as well.



Intercooler behind the 79 grille!!!



And just for fun since its actually in the garage....



Sean
 
#53 · (Edited)
Looks great but what are the chances that the frame or front suspension was damaged on the donor truck? The truck seems to have a bit of sag on the passenger side. Hopefully just something simple like a saggy spring on that side but it is a bit unusual since Dodges of this era typical sag on the driver side which is why I was pondering the wreck damage.


Edit: Oh, and please swing the mirrors in! :D
 
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