"Brown Truck" 1984 K30 Crew Cab

[yousesteers]

To give a little history on the truck I bought it in July of 2010 at a consignment sale that the Auction company I work for holds twice a year. The truck had sat in a warehouse at the local John Deere dealer for 13 years prior to that. The truck originally came out of New Mexico off of a ranch. Once the truck came to Missouri it was used as a tire truck for about a year. The rear seat was removed and had tool boxes built in that area with a compressor mounted under the hood and tanks mounted in the bed. It had a Tommy Lift Gate on it. The truck was powered by a 350 and a 4 spd. I did not take any pictures of the truck when I bought it I really regret that as I have made quite a few mods to it. This is what the truck looks like now it needs a bath in the picture.

[joe231]

I'm in!!!
Bring on the diesel!!!
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[rocking chevy]

looks pretty nice

[my4by2]

Love the K30 crew cabs!!! Can't wait to see where you go with it!!!

[yousesteers]

I will try to give the mods that I have done in the order that I have done them it may take me a few nights to get thru them so please be patient with me and as for the early ones there are not many pictures unless I go take some which it now is dark before i get home every night. The first thing I did was pull the tanks out of the bed that was for the air compressor the original plan was to hide one big tank under the bed where the passenger side fuel tank would be if the truck had dual tanks but my truck only has a single tank. The entire air compressor ended up off of the truck so I just scraped the tank idea. After the tanks where out I pulled the wooden toolboxes out of the back seat. I started driving the truck some but it ran poorly probably from sitting in storage so I ordered a new gas tank and cleaned up the carb. it seemed to run better after this. I then bought a set of seats out of an 05 crew cab silverado from the junk yard I gott hese cleaned up and sit them in the truck for a fitting. They came back out and I had to lower the front floor boards about 3 to 3.5 inches basically I cut the humps off of each side and made the floor board level all the way across then mounted the seats on a set of flat irons nd bolted those to the newly lowered floor boards. In the back i mounted them higher they are a little hard to climb into but this gives lots of leg room. Will try to get pictures of tehm mounted up in the truck this week to show what they look like.

[Skellington]

nice truck. love the crew cab long beds.

[Dieselwrencher]

Love the truck and thanks for using those wheels. Now I have an idea what my 76 should look like.

[yousesteers]

Here are a few picturees of my seat mounting not real good picture though it was dark tonight when I took them the seats are out of an 05 silverado crew cab. The frotn is a 40/20/40 with the fold down console and the rear is the 40/60 bench

[SS From the "Wood"]

thanks for posting up some pics of the seats... would love some more angles... any of the hardware exposed?

[yousesteers]

Will try to get more pictures of the seats but it was dark tonight when I got home and took these real quick

[yousesteers]

Now back to the rest of the truck. After the seats were mounted up and the electric in the driver side wired up so that it would work. I started driving the truck on a pretty regular basis in the spring of this year with small mechanical things getting fixed here and there. I had to do some work on the brakes as lines and slave cylinders would start to leak I think a lot of seals had dried out do to sitting for so long. I stripped all the interior trim out thinking that I would paint it with color bond and put it back in but I just finally got it put back together this week. After driving the truck for a while it developed a low end knock on the motor. All I had done was change the fluids in it and ran it after it had sit for so long I probably should have dropped the oil pan and taken the valve covers off and cleaned the motor of any sludge. I think the knock developed when a oil passage got clogged with some sludge and created a rod knocking. With this developement came the dilemma of what to do. I had already been discussing taking out the 350 and putting a Big block in or a Diesel of soem sort but I thought it woudl be down the line a little bit. After some research and cussing and discussing it was decided to put a 5.9 cummins in it and a 5 speed overdrive transmission so the hunt was on. While looking for a engine I went ahead and pulled the 350 and the 4 speed and transfer case out. Since I had decided to go the cummins route I made the decision to pull the front clip as I did not know how much fabrication would have to take place and this would be easier to get to our work. Here is a picture of the truck sitting out in front of the shop at my parents waiting on the motor.

[yousesteers]

Forgot to put that I put the newer aluminum wheels on the truck bought them off a guy I know with 50% tread tires on them. The tire shop said that the lug nuts were the ssame thread so I started to put the wheels on and the lug nuts would not hardly go on. I only tried one then did some checking the new trucks are metric thread of course our squares are SAE so I went to see my friendly parts guy he got me the correct lug nuts with the threads to hold the late model center caps on. I just cut a hole in the front ones to accomodate the hub.

[Maxxd07]

Oh my dream truck! Cant wait to see more!

[yousesteers]

Well after searching ever internet site and trade paper we offered a 1996 Dodge 4X4 with a cummins in it and a 5 speed at a consignmet auction. I bought the entire truck for $3000. Here is a picture of it sitting in the shop getting ready for disassembly

[rocking chevy]

sweet, gona be awesome!

[yousesteers]

Here are some more Pictures of the Dodge in Tear down and the Cummins out of the truck





Motor is out


Motor Sitting on Floor


NV4500 Transmission and NP241DLD sitting on Floor as you can see the 241 is a driver side drop transfer case and our squares are passenger side drop I will address how I fixed this later on.

Next will come what was done to the motor before it was put in to the chevy

[yousesteers]

While the 5.9 was out of the trucks I fixed the Killer Dowel Pin first



Here is the motor with the timing cover off


I did not have a engine stand with enough weight rating so I did all my engine work with it hanging off the cherry picker. My old wagon jack would leak down pretty bad with the motor on it so i made it possible to put the 20 ton on the cherry picker




I also replaced all the gasket in the engine to try and control any oil leaks and put all new bearings in the lower end.



I then set the valve lash and buttoned the 5.9 up and put it out of the way for a little while



You must remember this motor came out of a runnig truck so I had drove and run the motor before this so I did not run the injectors or the injection pump as it seemed everything ran and was in good operation when I pulled the motor from the dodge. If I was to buy a motor that I could not run for an extended period of time I would pull the injectors and Injection pump and have them checked.

[Doug_J]

Gonna be awesome, Id love to do this swap on my truck.

[yousesteers]

Well with the motor buttoned up and put in the corner out of the way it was time to put the Brown truck back in the shop and work on the engine mounts and cross member

Original idea was to use the stock dodge mounts and put them in the Chevrolet Frame but upon further inspection the motor side of the mount was cracked in the cast part on both mounts.





Since that was not gonna work it was decide to order a mount kit from Tennessee Diesel Conversions these use factory Chevrolet BB isolators and have a bracket that mounts on the motor and comes with a Crossmember because the factory crossmember is not low enough to clear the oil pan

Here is a picture of the crossmember and new isolators in the truck

[yousesteers]

Now that the mounts and cross member are in the turck it was time to sit the motor in but not before paint. The motor was put back on the Cherry picker and moved outside the shop and painted Chevy Engine Enamel Orange.



After the paint the motor was sit in the truck on the new mounts


As you can see in the next picture the front crossmember had to be trimmed to clear the harmonic balancer when you do this wat the brake lines that run across it


After the motor was set in place I put the Transmision and the transfer case in I am running a NV4500 out of the Dodge pickup that came behind this Cummins and a NP205 Tranfer Case that came out of a 1989-1993 Dodge. This 205 transfer uses a factory adapter the make it a round bolt pattern instead of the figure 8 and is 29 spline just like the NV 4500 that Dodge uses. here is a picture of the 205 they are not easy to find these were only used by Dodge for 5 years and only on Cummins equipped 5 speed trucks I found this one on craigslist. To mount the 205 to the transmission you have to remove the seal out of the back of the transmission and allow it to run fluid in to the adapter. This is because the 205 has a longer coupling than the 241dld the front seal on the transfer case will keep them from swapping fluids I put gaskets in the adapter wher it bolts to the transfer case and the transmission


and it laying beside the 241 case



Once the transmission and the Transfer was in it was time to figure out a Tranny Crossmember. I used the factory Chevrolet cross member and moved it back and put a 2 inch block on top of it to make the motor and transmission sit level. In the picture you can see the factory holes in the frame for the cross member and where it sits now.

[yousesteers]

Once the motor was mounted up it was time to wire the engine up this was doen with a combination of existing stock wiring and some new wire. There is only one wire that has to be in place to make the 12 valve cummins run and that is the wire to the starter solenoid and I just used the factory wire off the old starter . I decided to use the electric fuel shutoff solenoid to use this it requires 3 wires: 1 ground, 1 that is hot with the key on I used the distributor wire for this, and another for the pull curcuit. To wire the pull circuit It is a heavy 8 guage wire that is run thru a relay to activate the relay I went to the start and made the reley activate when the starter was engaged this makes the pull circuit activate when the starter is engaged. I decided to use the fuel shut off solenoid for when my wife or someone else drove the truck they would not have to find a pull cable to shut the truck off. For all the guage needs I ran Chevrolet senders in the Cummins blocks therefore running my Factory dash guages. I then built a bracket and machined a pulley to run the Chevrolet alternator and used the factory wiring for that but did have to lengthen the wires.

I then ran my fuel lines I used the factory fuel lines in the frame and then ran rubber across the cross member to the lift pump. I used the same fuel tank and lines with out any changes to the system.

I then bled the fuel and reinstalled the front clip. With the front clip installed I put the radiator back in I decided to use the 4 core Chevy Radiator on the bottom hose I used a hose off a Case IH tractor cut to fit I can get the Part # if any one wants it. and onthe top I used the cummins top radiator hose cut to fit.

Once the radiator was in I mounted the intercooler out of the 1996 Dodge into the Chevrolet. I mounted it upside down this made it easier to fit and less cutting to the radiator support. I used the factory dodge intercooler tubes and boots I had to clock the turbo outlet about 90 degrees to get everything to line up. This worked good.

After the radiator and all was installed I did some measuring and came up about 2 inches short of getting the mechanical fan back in the stock location so I decided to put in electric fans in I decided to run 2 flexalite 14 inch fans side by side. I used Summit racing controllers to runn the fans. I would llike to say these work great but I put them in the thermostat bypass tubes thinking they would get enough water circulation there to open up and kick the fans on but they do not I have ordered another way of mounting them and will let you know how that works when I get them put in the new location.

Next I mounted the Dual batteries to and had new battery cables made out of 0guage cable by a local repair shop I grounded each battery to the block and put plenty of gornd straps to the body and the frame.

With all this done and the fluids all filled and checked it was time to start the motor it started off the first tiem with out a hitch. The first time I let it run for about an hour and kept an eye on everything it all seemed to be ok and ran great sitting in the shop I could not drive it as I did not have any driveshafts in it at that time.

[yousesteers]

[yousesteers]

Forgot to mention I mounted up a K&N air filter with a 4 inch piece of Stainless Steel to get it to the turbo Intake. the pipe is mounted on a bracket I built and bolted to the inner fender. If any body has questions feel free to ask as i could of left something out.

[85sierraclassic]

how did you hook your power stearing and hydroboost up?

[rocking chevy]

Ive seen a couple of other people put a piece of metal over the dowel pin, whats the reason for that?