International L122 B Binder Rat Build

[jfg455]

Well I guess if you could bump it to 250hp and 500lb ft torque it would move the IH in great fashion! The bread truck is a good idea. Then you can snag the trans out of it as well. Tons of stock rear plates to go with whatever trans you want. How about an early Izusu NPR turbo diesel? I'd really like to snag one for my 72 CJ5...[P

 

[jmlcolorado]

Well I guess if you could bump it to 250hp and 500lb ft torque it would move the IH in great fashion! The bread truck is a good idea. Then you can snag the trans out of it as well. Tons of stock rear plates to go with whatever trans you want. How about an early Izusu NPR turbo diesel? I'd really like to snag one for my 72 CJ5...[P

I'm certainly open to other models, I'm just familiar with cummins. I also know dimensions and availability of them which makes my comfort level a little better.
Maybe I'll do a little more research on other diesels and see what I can come up with.

 

[AZRodDave]

I'm certainly open to other models, I'm just familiar with cummins. I also know dimensions and availability of them which makes my comfort level a little better.

Friend of mine always says, "Stick with what ya know." Pretty smart friend.

 

[Gunzenrosa]

Go for it with the diesel. Don't wait till I fire mine up this summer to change your mind. [ddd

 

[Thefarmboy21]

Here Ya go
http://youtu.be/mFK9H4AG_Ww

This reminds me, get a brass brush with wooden handle.....NOT plastic. Plastic will melt and you'll loose all the bristles. Ask me how I know

I had a hard time finding the brush locally (Home Depot and harbor freight are steel coated in brass)
I think I ended up buying online and even that took a lot of communication asking sellers if it was real brass or not. It was amazing had no idea what they were selling. Darn middlemen.
I found jeweler supply places were best.

SWEET!!! Thanks a bunch. I'll definitely try it out as soon as I get the chance.
Yea, on the 4BT I don't think you can go wrong. Some bread trucks have them coupled to turbo 400 trannies already! I can't find any around here tho.....everyone either junked them or they got bought up by the diesel finatics. I've got a couple IDI ford diesels I've been toying with but we'll see....gotta build a frame and patch the body first lol

 

[clamor]

I saw a guy cover a piece in flux and then solder a brass rod to the area he wanted to cover in brass. A lot thicker & essentially permanent. Essentially oxy/acy welding w/o joining 2 pieces together.

How much will the hot-rodded version of this truck weigh? There are a ton of folks putting TDIs & Kuboda engines in 1/4 ton vehicles. Jeeps, Rangers & the like. I can pull up some threads I've been reading lately if you're interested.
-Chaz

 

[jmlcolorado]

Well ladies and gentleman. The search for a 4bt donor has ended.
I had my mind set on driving to OKC next month to pick up a bread truck, bring it home, pull the motor then scrap the rest. It would have a pricy venture but I would have gotten the engine.

Scouring ebay the other day and stumbled across one, just one singular add for a 4ht conversion in a 1999 Dodge Ram 1500.
Seemed to look pretty good so I placed a bid. And for 3 days the price didn't change.
Guy said he had posted the build on 3 different forums so I tracked them down and read them all... A few times. And the more I read, the more I wanted.
I buy on ebay all the time but it's always a Buy It Now auction. It's been a very long time since ice actually done a real auction on eBay, and I don't think I ever won before.

Truck is 1200 miles away, so contemplated shipping. Placed an add on uship and am getting prices back between $1k and $1300.
Figured I could drive out myself and pick the thing up for less then that, and have more fun doing it.
So called up my buddy to see if he was in (more like, to see if his wife would let him go) on such short notice.
This morning, 2 hours before the auction ended, he got the thumbs up. That queued me to raising my highest bid. I figure if I'm not going to ship it, I'll roll that into what I would be willing to pay, minus cost to drive out.

Last 20 mi Utes of the auction was the most nerve racking 20 minutes I've had in a long time..... And a few souls tried taking this away from me by attempting to bid......but it was already long set in my head that this truck was mine.

So here's what we're looking at.
1999 crew cab short bed 2 wheel drive 1500.
4bt
47re trans which he says previous owner just rebuilt, and based off the pictures from when he did the swap. The trans was all shiney pretty, so I'll assume it's rebuilt.
He's done mods to the Injection pump already which you diesel guys will know, wakes these trucks up a little.
He has an Hx30 turbo on it with a modified 6bt exhaust manifold flipped up side down. This places the turbo in the primary spot for compound setup
See where I'm going here?
He also has 5x16 I jectors i. The truck, which is basically 200 horse injectors. These are quite large and more commonly seen in 1000hp 6bt's.
He also has a second turbo he was working on setting up as the compound
4" exhaust. All factory amenities in the truck work, ie AC, Heat, power options, and so on. Only thing not working is the tach.
He has about 2,000 miles on the truck since the swap and he says its broad worthy. Only issue is it has an AG pump with industrial governer on it, so it's not quite as forgiving as a road governer. His mods to the pump help this, but it's still not the best governer for a street truck. This particular governer is more commonly seen in 6bt sled pulling truck because they fuel heavy. This will be charged to a road governer once I have the truck.

So here's the plan, I can't miss a ton of work, so need to utilize the weekend here.
This Friday were leaving denver at 3am in my truck. Were going to take the 18 hour drive to San jose California (technically 45 min east).
Hopefully roll in late Friday night and crash.......and crash hard. Gonna be a long drive.
Saturday meet and buy the truck. Spend the rest of saturday driving the truck and getting a feel for it, in the hopes that we can catch anything it might need before the trip home.
My buddy has friends and family in San jose so we're going to visit them for the day and crash there for the night.
Sunday, 3am roll out. I will rent a 2 wheel vehicle dolly for my truck. My buddy will drive my truck back, and I'll drive the "new" one.
I'll drive it till something breaks, and If I can't fix it on the side of the road, up on the dolly it goes for the rest of the drive.

Weather looked awesome for the drive, up until the moment I bought the truck, now denver is going to get snow from about 8 hours ago all the way through Sunday. Fantastic
February total at the house is 17" and that was really all in the last week. 3' piles in front of the house tonight. I70 closed due to multiple wrecks.

I really don't see how anything could go wrong with this plan
BUT, if something does, I've got the GoPro and it'll be documented for all to point and laugh at me at a later date

Anyone here watch Roadkill TV!?
Yeah, that's how this whole thing is lining up.

 

[jmlcolorado]

And for giggles, here's a couple videos of the truck.
First start since conversion
http://youtu.be/TjJ39LLwur8



http://youtu.be/FxBAa6DidKQ


P.s. The reason he's selling is because he can't get smog passed in California due to the conversion. And he has 6 other cummins' on his property that are drivers. He was building this one for his wife as a commuter truck, but ran out of steam when he found out the hoops he had to jump through to pass smog.

 

[AZRodDave]

That's one hellofa story, and adventure!!!

Why not just wing it out there? I mean fly, of course. Then you get extra time to make sure it is solid for the drive back, and less pressure. Then again, if it blows up part way you are skrewed !!! Except for the weather.

I like your plan better. LOL [S

 

[jmlcolorado]

Why not just wing it out there? I mean fly, of course. Then you get extra time to make sure it is solid for the drive back, and less pressure. Then again, if it blows up part way you are skrewed !!! Except for the weather, I like your plan better. LOL [S

Is prefer to fly, but then I have no contingency plan.
At this rate, inclimate weather, limited milage on a conversion, truck hodge podged together with parts from multiple different trucks/industrial equipment........it all just sounds too exciting not to pass up

 

[CORPO]

sounds like a fun adventure.. good luck!

 

[jmlcolorado]

sounds like a fun adventure.. good luck!

Adventure.....yes.
We'll see about fun.
I know mother natures idea of fun is finally dumping a whole pile of winter on us the minute I decided to buy the truck. Video below.

 

[jmlcolorado]

So made the trip…..and what a long trip it was! 3000 miles in 3 days!
Left 3 am Friday morning. Started out the trip lookin like this.








19* and plenty of snow to keep everyone at home in the early morning hours to give us wide open road.

Got to Laramie, WY

Laramie is a wonderful place. I don’t know why more people don’t settle in there.
Got wrapped up in thick fog, blowing snow slowing speeds to 10-15 MPH. Miserable.
Once we got out of that we were in good shape. Rolled into Salt Lake City, UT with awesome weather.



Next leg landed us in Fernley, NV. I was napping while my buddy drove. I woke up and noticed the volt gauge was low. Tried to roll down the window and found it didn’t have any power.
Pulled over to the one and only auto parts store in town and replaced the alternator. Lost about 45 minutes on that break but it was good to stretch the legs.
Got the alternator installed just before sunset. We pressed on.

We made it to a town called Live Oak, CA about 10:30 Friday night and crashed in a hotel. It was a long grueling drive, and little did I know, was to be best night sleep I would have for the rest of the weekend.

The truck was having steering issues towards the end of the first day. It wasn’t returning to center all the way, which was making for a twitchy drive at 85 MPH. Next morning we got up around 8am to look into the steering.
I had just installed brand new ball joints and all new steering linkage about 5k ago.
I suspected ball joints since their break in period was 5k miles and required to be greased at that time. So I pulled the linkage off and checked both sides…… ball joints good and loose (but tight…..you know what I mean).
I greased all steering linkage and ball joints which cleared up the steering.

Off to the bank to get cash and off to buy a truck.

Rolled through some beautiful country. Guys house was in the middle of thousands of acres of cherry trees.
I haven't been to cali in years and was far too young to care about landscape, so this was nice to see now.

 

[jmlcolorado]

So to back up a little, my plan was to rent a car dolly as the contingency plan for when/if the "new" truck broke down. After the alternator swap in Nevada, I started looking at u-haul to reserve one. Turns out they wouldn’t rent for the truck I was towing since it was 200LBS over capacity. Figured id just shoot for car haler trailer. Same thing. PLUS they wanted $650 to rent from Live Oak, CA to Home!!!! CRAZY.
So I classic redneck style, we ran to wal-mart and grabbed a tow bar setup.
Having never towed with a tow bar before, did a little research prior.

Once we got to the sellers house, I drove the truck around for about 20 minutes and decided its sold. I asked him if I could work on getting the tow bar brackets setup on the truck before we left his property, which he was good with.
We removed the front bumper to get to the frame to see what was needed. Turns out there are holes in the cross member between rails that lined up pretty well for the brackets. We just needed different bolts (and grade 8 for comfort).





So handed him the green and headed off to ACE to get the required hardware.
Once we arrived, found we had a pretty solid fuel leak which soaked then entire engine in oily diesel. I considered it water repellant.
Finished up the bracket mounting at subway around noon.



Here's a fun video:


My buddy has family and friends in san jose he wanted to see so we headed that way. We planned on staying at his buddy's house in san Jose Saturday night then heading out early Sunday morning, like we did Friday night.
What we failed to realize was that by staying in san Jose, we added another 2 hours and 45 minutes to our drive back.





Heres a cool video on the way to san jose.


So we went to his family's house and hung out or a bit, grabbed dinner, then off to his buddy's house. We visited till 9:30 Saturday night then decided to start driving back.
We drove till 3 am when we arrived in Reno, NV. We crashed in the trucks till 5am when we started back on the road again.

Lots of road time, in and out of some rain, clear skys, more rain. Made it ALMOST to Bonneville when my buddy radioed me to say we lost the tach.
No big deal, keep pressing forward.
Few minutes later he said we also lost cruise. This was a problem since the truck has an agricultural injection pump on it. This makes the throttle peddle VERY hard to operate. The first 1/3 of throttle was soft, but was only operating 1/4 throttle. The last 2/3 of the throttle position was hard as a rock and was the remaining 3/4 throttle, but the overall throw in the peddle was only about an inch. You actually had to use leg muscle to operate, and it was more like an on/off switch vs variable throttle.
I told him to keep pressing forward till he couldn’t go anymore and we'd switch.
Another few minutes go by and he says the alternator is dead, then the truck dies.

Well, in comes the contingency plan.






Disconnect the battery and driveshaft, hook up the trucks and start back on the road.

Gotta tell ya, flat towing is strange! You’ve got 5k lbs behind you with no brakes. When the tow vehicle breaks moderately, the nose drops, the tail raises, and the vehicle behind towed pushes back, forcing the tow vehicle tail end to sway around. Not cool.
Took about 40 miles to get used to it and get to a solid speed. 65-70 MPH.
Still 700 miles to home. This is going to be a long drive :/

I lost track of how many times we swapped, but we were both quite sleep deprived.
I ended up finding a semi cruising at a good speed and tailing him. Using him to lock vision on and follow vs scanning the dark road the whole time. This got me pretty far.
I got us into Laramie, which again was the most pleasant place on the face of the planet, with dense fog. I couldn’t see more than two dashed lines in front of me, but trucks were going 3 times my speed.
Finally got us out of Laramie and into Cheyenne wy, which is when we made the last swap.
I slept the rest of the way home and woke up to pulling into the driveway at 12:30 this morning.



So After all that, I have a 3.9L cummins 4BT for the rat. Also have a 47RE overdrive trans. I was getting 18 MPG out of it on the highway but it needs some serious tuning…….and an "on-road" injection pump. Hope to get into the mid 20's for fuel economy.

 

[DJ3100]

Great travel log! Thanks for posting it.

 

[jmlcolorado]

Great travel log! Thanks for posting it.

Wish it was a little better. I had brought a GoPro to get some fun videos of the thing, but everything happened so fast. Less then 2 days worth of planning, then the trip showed up and finished before I knew it.
Oh well, still got some good stuff. And it was fun.

 

[Old Iron]

Man, that's a trip to put i the books!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks for the play by play, I loved reading about it!!!!!!!!!

 

[jmlcolorado]

Man, that's a trip to put i the books!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks for the play by play, I loved reading about it!!!!!!!!!

It most certainly was! Honestly, the trip in its entirety was half the fun.
I can't say I would do i again, but this once was worth it

 

[soltz]

Road Trip!!!!!!!!!!!

[cl[cl[cl[cl[cl[cl[cl

 

[bob w]

Well. that was an epic journey. Thanks for taking us along.