Building your own truck

Multiply the amount of work you think it will take by about 10 and then decide whether or not you want to do it.

Halfway into one right now and I'm about done with it. I should have just wrote a cheque for $50k ten years ago and bought one that someone else went through the headache to fix.

 

Yep

it’s almost always cheaper to buy that to build.

i assume this OP has at least $100k or more , cash on hand to spend . Cause it’s gonna take that minimum to rebuild an old truck from The ground up .

and the $100k is if the OP does a lot of the work himself .
If he’s gonna pay someone to do everything ,that number will double .I’ve seen some old trucks for sale that were nice , and well maintained .
Id start with the nicest old one I could find .

same as building a classic car .
The extra money you pay for less rust etc is good money spent .


I would buy the nicest rig
You could find that’s the wheelbase
You want and go from there .

the frame and chassis on most old trucks is in pretty good condition ,
I’ve seen some with cracked crossmembers but I’ve not ever seen any significant damage to the frame itself , at least not on any of the 8 old trucks I owned .

 

I've lost a lot of interest in restoration stuff. I'm fine with replacing an interior or swapping running gear but I will never buy a vehicle that requires a full frame off rebuild.

 

Thats an interesting thought, its probably possible, but have to have a very custom harness made up/make it yourself with decent relays for swapping between the two.

Depends on ecm model too, for instance the 3406e ecm is fuel cooled, so need to run the fuel through both, maybe parralelized not serialized. And the question of WHERE is another matter too

 

They have programs you can switch while driving. Economy-Stock- and HP. PDI sells one. One ecm, 3 program or parameter choices. Little switch with 3 settings. It’s expensive ofcourse. I like the concept though.

 

I would think that you just can't turn off things like DPF. The soot from the engine is still going through it, and it must be dealt with some how.

 

I’m not sure why you’d want to go through the trouble if you’re putting your own truck together. You’d basically need two ecm’s and I’d think that would be a wiring nightmare to have them both functional but only one talking to the engine at a time. Then you’d need two separate exhaust systems. Then you’d still have EGR and a VGT when you want to run the “old tune” ECM so you’d have to figure out a tune to make the truck run with those since most who delete remove the EGR and put a regular turbo on.

If it were me I’d just build an old engine. I don’t see how it’s even possible or feasible to run an engine that is both a compliant new engine and what is basically a pre emission engine.

 

How would you get the proper turbo for such an engine?