Diesel "Repowers' Provide Cheap Transportation

Diesel "Repowers' Provide Cheap Transportation PICKUPS Modifications 27-5-39 Tired of high gasoline prices? Don't mind driving an older vehicle? Maybe you need to follow Mark Overbye's lead and replace your gas guzzlers with diesels. Over the past 10 years, Overbye has put diesel engines into two pickups, a Surburban, and a Ford straight truck. The Lake Alma, Saskatchewan, farmer and cattleman says the first repower job he did was putting a 5.7-liter GMC diesel in a 1965 GMC pickup. He later put a 5.9-liter Cummins diesel from a Dodge pickup into a 1976 GMC crewcab. And for a family vehicle, he put a 6.2-liter diesel in a 1965 GMC Suburban. "If you have the time, a shop to do the work in, the patience to do it right, and don't mind driving an older vehicle, you can save a lot of money, particularly on fuel," he says. "I'm a mechanic and I have a repair shop on the farm where I work on just about everything," he says. "When you go out to get a diesel engine, it's best to buy the whole vehicle if you can, or at least get as much of the engine and radiator mountings and attachments as possible," he advises. "At the time I did the 1965 pickup, I was working off the farm for a John Deere dealer 40 miles away, and needed something cheap to drive to work," he says. The pickup was inexpensive, but the gasoline engine was worn out. So he found a junked 1984 Oldsmobile with a 5.7-liter diesel in it. He salvaged the engine and Turbo 350 3-speed automatic transmission from the Olds and sold much of the remainder of the car for parts. He says the engine and transmission fit easily into the old 1/2-ton pickup. He's put nearly 70,000 miles on the pickup since putting in the engine in 1994. "I'd heard some negative things about the 5.7-liter diesel, but it was in good shape at the time. I rebuilt the fuel pump and replaced the injectors a few years ago, but it hasn't given me any other trouble. It's still going strong," he says. Since he was trying to achieve the best fuel efficiency possible, he later changed the gears in the old pickup's differential. "It had a 3.73 rear end in it when I got it," he says. "I found a 3.08 rear end in a junked early 1970s Chevy and put that into it. That change alone got me another 3 to 5 miles per gallon." A few years later Overbye found a 1976 GMC crewcab 4-WD pickup that he could redo. "I found a junked 1993 Dodge 4-WD with a 5.9-liter Cummins diesel. The engine was fine, but the body was in sad shape," he says. The 1976 model wasn't in much better shape. The cab was fine, but it took parts from several other Chevy and GMC pickups to make it acceptable all over. "The box came off a 1987 pickup. The front clip is off a 1980 model, and the frame, axles and drivetrain were salvaged from a 1984 model," he says. The 5.9-liter was a tight fit under the GMC's hood, but he didn't have to cut the firewall or the radiator for it to fit. The biggest problem was that he had to build a new cross member to fit under the crew cab. "I used the dimensions from the Dodge to pattern the new one, so it wasn't that difficult a problem to solve," he says. For a transmission, he left the GMC transfer case in place and attached it to the 5-speed manual transmission that was in the Dodge. The crew cab pickup has become his primary farm vehicle now, and he uses it for everything from running around the farm to pulling a 5th wheel trailer. He figures he spent less than $11,000 on the crew cab rebuild and repower. Overbye's family vehicle is the 1965 Suburban. "I had been looking for an early Surburban for awhile. I finally found a good body in North Dakota. I mounted that on a frame salvaged from a 1980 half-ton Chevy pickup. For an engine, I found a totaled 1982 Chevy Blazer with a 6.2-liter diesel. The engine, mounts and radiator were useable, but not much else," he says. "I used the transmission and transfer case from the 1980 pickup in the Suburban. The conversion went so well we get 22 miles per U.S. gallon on the highway." He says the easiest conversion he's done was helping his father-in-law, Kenne

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