General Information
Year
2005
Make
Dodge
Model
Ram 3500 4x4
Color
Black
Packages
SLT
History
Bought this truck as a nice winter beater... Well OK, a nice daily driver. My 96 Ram 3500 4x4 CCLB DRW had become less and less reliable the more I put the power to it, so I wanted something that I could drive and not have to worry about. Found this after much looking and scooped it up. QCLB so most guys weren't as interested in it, giving me a decent deal. It was mostly stock with many records of maintenance and 190k miles. The original owner installed the DR performance box and an AFE stage 2 cold air intake.
Eventually the bug bit me and I picked up a smarty S-06 from a friend of mine. That began the slippery slope that lead me to dub this truck "Gettin' Outta Hand" as it didn't take all that long for it to "get out of hand". It didn't take long to figure out that the smarty didn't mix well with the Dr Performance box, so out that went. After a while of running it with the smarty, the factory rebuilt transmission started to take a vacation so the planning and saving began. So ended 2014...
As tax return season approached, a plan was devised to improve upon said transmission by having Firepunk in Ohio build one for me. After several conversations about timelines and shipping, the conclusion was made that during the slow season that winter is for me in the construction world, I would be much better off driving the truck to their shop for an installation. On a Sunday I began my trek down and by noon on Monday Feb 16, my trans was installed and ready. I spent the rest of that day talking to some of the customers that were there as well as their technicians and Lavon. It was an experience that I will never forget. On the way home I started to turn up the smarty and have a little fun with the truck.
Wouldn't you know it that I found myself wanting more, and I just happened to have a little turbo upgrade laying around in the form of a 63/71/13ss. Oddly enough, this turbo was at one time a 64/71/14 that was on my 96 until it failed and had to be rebuilt. My turbo rebuilder gave me a deal on a cast 63mm compressor wheel with a 90* cover like the 3rd gen that he had laying around. I purchased the HTT 13cm stainless steel housing used to replace the heavily cracked 14cm cast piece. During the time that I had been contemplating the turbo upgrade, I tracked down a Stainless Diesel T3 2nd gen manifold to go with the turbo. The small odds and ends were purchased and the swap happened.
Somewhere along the line I decided that I liked the idea of ladder bars better than the straight type that many others use, so I picked up a used set of GDP Double X bars to keep the axle wrap in check. After these were attached, it only made sense to see what it could do on the track... So after loading up TNT-r on to the smarty S-06 I made the trip to Great Lakes Dragaway in Union Grove, WI. After a few runs, it had laid down a consistent [email protected] Just to see if it would make a difference, I decided to try and run once without the tailgate... [email protected] That was the best run for the day and seeing that I wasn't running a lockup switch at all and just letting the transmission do its job, I felt that it was pretty respectable. At the estimated 7800#, these times and trap speeds put me somewhere between 500 and 550 which is pretty good for nothing more than a transmission, 63/71 turbo, and smarty TNT-r. Stock 230K mile fuel system still kicking it.
Well, the summer went by pretty uneventfully with long days of work and occasional weekend trips to pulls and such. Fast forward to August and the trip that was planned for me to drive down to Terre Haute, IN to attend the 2015 Scheid Diesel Extravaganza. My girlfriend was in Texas for work and would fly into Indianapolis Friday night to attend the rest of the event. A week prior to the trip, a full service was done on the truck and everything seemed to be alright. After driving down all afternoon, I arrived in Terre Haute and upon exiting the truck I noticed a strong oil vapor smell coming from the truck. I checked the level and it was still just below full, so I chocked it up to the long drive.
Skip ahead to Friday night.... I knew it took an hour to get to the airport, so I had to leave before the end of the pulls. So I leave the grounds and head to the interstate. While driving up the ramp, I got out of the throttle fast to kind of coast into traffic but quickly realized that a semi was barrelling down on me so I jumped back into the throttle. Well, little did I know that this was the beginning of a pretty stressful weekend for me. While passing a car on the freeway I noticed a strange smoke coming from my truck, but didn't think much of it... Once I got off the highway, the problem became painfully obvious. The truck shook wildly at low RPM and was smoking terribly. I drove into the parking ramp, shut off the truck, popped the hood and checked the oil. About a quarter of an inch above the full mark... Dammit! Unscrew the oil fill and start the engine, off the cap flew and the vapor shot up to the bottom of the hood. Now I am not only an hour from the hotel room and anyone who I know that could maybe help, but I am also 8 hours away from home. We rented a car, parked the truck in long term parking, and started the painful drive back to the event. The next day I arranged a ride for it to get as close as Marengo, IL and tried to salvage what we could of an otherwise bad situation and set up a ride for us to get the rest of the way home on Sunday.
It has since been a slow pace to get this project done. I had hoped to not have to rebuild the engine this soon... Well that turned out to not be the case. Once all the way home, a place to do the work had to be arranged because I don't even have a garage and can't afford to pay someone else to do the stuff that I am capable of doing. I was going to just pull the whole engine straight out and send it off, but curiosity get the best of me and I pulled the head. It was found that everything looked good at first glance, however upon further inspection it was found that #6 had a gouge in the wall towards #5 that couldn't be seen right away. So then the rest of it had to get pulled so that the block could be further inspected. When everything was out and on the stand, we popped the pistons out and found that the #6 piston compression ring had broken into 3 pieces. Also found that #4 had a broken lower ring. The pistons look to be in decent shape otherwise. It was determined that the #6 injector had stuck open and busted the ring. The injectors were beyond the service life expectancy and would definitely need to be replaced. The engine will be rebuilt with new rings, bearings, gaskets, balanced, #6 sleeved, and a few other odds and ends.
With the injectors needing to be replaced, it began the research on what size would get me to my goals. This also opened up the reality that this 63mm turbo wasn't going to cut it. I thought about compounds for about a minute, but decided that with my budget I needed something more cost friendly all around. That pretty much set my mind on the S467.7 so that I can still use the truck, while still making exciting power. That also set the injector size to 150% over. This also meant dual cp3's would be needed.
Eventually the bug bit me and I picked up a smarty S-06 from a friend of mine. That began the slippery slope that lead me to dub this truck "Gettin' Outta Hand" as it didn't take all that long for it to "get out of hand". It didn't take long to figure out that the smarty didn't mix well with the Dr Performance box, so out that went. After a while of running it with the smarty, the factory rebuilt transmission started to take a vacation so the planning and saving began. So ended 2014...
As tax return season approached, a plan was devised to improve upon said transmission by having Firepunk in Ohio build one for me. After several conversations about timelines and shipping, the conclusion was made that during the slow season that winter is for me in the construction world, I would be much better off driving the truck to their shop for an installation. On a Sunday I began my trek down and by noon on Monday Feb 16, my trans was installed and ready. I spent the rest of that day talking to some of the customers that were there as well as their technicians and Lavon. It was an experience that I will never forget. On the way home I started to turn up the smarty and have a little fun with the truck.
Wouldn't you know it that I found myself wanting more, and I just happened to have a little turbo upgrade laying around in the form of a 63/71/13ss. Oddly enough, this turbo was at one time a 64/71/14 that was on my 96 until it failed and had to be rebuilt. My turbo rebuilder gave me a deal on a cast 63mm compressor wheel with a 90* cover like the 3rd gen that he had laying around. I purchased the HTT 13cm stainless steel housing used to replace the heavily cracked 14cm cast piece. During the time that I had been contemplating the turbo upgrade, I tracked down a Stainless Diesel T3 2nd gen manifold to go with the turbo. The small odds and ends were purchased and the swap happened.
Somewhere along the line I decided that I liked the idea of ladder bars better than the straight type that many others use, so I picked up a used set of GDP Double X bars to keep the axle wrap in check. After these were attached, it only made sense to see what it could do on the track... So after loading up TNT-r on to the smarty S-06 I made the trip to Great Lakes Dragaway in Union Grove, WI. After a few runs, it had laid down a consistent [email protected] Just to see if it would make a difference, I decided to try and run once without the tailgate... [email protected] That was the best run for the day and seeing that I wasn't running a lockup switch at all and just letting the transmission do its job, I felt that it was pretty respectable. At the estimated 7800#, these times and trap speeds put me somewhere between 500 and 550 which is pretty good for nothing more than a transmission, 63/71 turbo, and smarty TNT-r. Stock 230K mile fuel system still kicking it.
Well, the summer went by pretty uneventfully with long days of work and occasional weekend trips to pulls and such. Fast forward to August and the trip that was planned for me to drive down to Terre Haute, IN to attend the 2015 Scheid Diesel Extravaganza. My girlfriend was in Texas for work and would fly into Indianapolis Friday night to attend the rest of the event. A week prior to the trip, a full service was done on the truck and everything seemed to be alright. After driving down all afternoon, I arrived in Terre Haute and upon exiting the truck I noticed a strong oil vapor smell coming from the truck. I checked the level and it was still just below full, so I chocked it up to the long drive.
Skip ahead to Friday night.... I knew it took an hour to get to the airport, so I had to leave before the end of the pulls. So I leave the grounds and head to the interstate. While driving up the ramp, I got out of the throttle fast to kind of coast into traffic but quickly realized that a semi was barrelling down on me so I jumped back into the throttle. Well, little did I know that this was the beginning of a pretty stressful weekend for me. While passing a car on the freeway I noticed a strange smoke coming from my truck, but didn't think much of it... Once I got off the highway, the problem became painfully obvious. The truck shook wildly at low RPM and was smoking terribly. I drove into the parking ramp, shut off the truck, popped the hood and checked the oil. About a quarter of an inch above the full mark... Dammit! Unscrew the oil fill and start the engine, off the cap flew and the vapor shot up to the bottom of the hood. Now I am not only an hour from the hotel room and anyone who I know that could maybe help, but I am also 8 hours away from home. We rented a car, parked the truck in long term parking, and started the painful drive back to the event. The next day I arranged a ride for it to get as close as Marengo, IL and tried to salvage what we could of an otherwise bad situation and set up a ride for us to get the rest of the way home on Sunday.
It has since been a slow pace to get this project done. I had hoped to not have to rebuild the engine this soon... Well that turned out to not be the case. Once all the way home, a place to do the work had to be arranged because I don't even have a garage and can't afford to pay someone else to do the stuff that I am capable of doing. I was going to just pull the whole engine straight out and send it off, but curiosity get the best of me and I pulled the head. It was found that everything looked good at first glance, however upon further inspection it was found that #6 had a gouge in the wall towards #5 that couldn't be seen right away. So then the rest of it had to get pulled so that the block could be further inspected. When everything was out and on the stand, we popped the pistons out and found that the #6 piston compression ring had broken into 3 pieces. Also found that #4 had a broken lower ring. The pistons look to be in decent shape otherwise. It was determined that the #6 injector had stuck open and busted the ring. The injectors were beyond the service life expectancy and would definitely need to be replaced. The engine will be rebuilt with new rings, bearings, gaskets, balanced, #6 sleeved, and a few other odds and ends.
With the injectors needing to be replaced, it began the research on what size would get me to my goals. This also opened up the reality that this 63mm turbo wasn't going to cut it. I thought about compounds for about a minute, but decided that with my budget I needed something more cost friendly all around. That pretty much set my mind on the S467.7 so that I can still use the truck, while still making exciting power. That also set the injector size to 150% over. This also meant dual cp3's would be needed.
2005 Dodge Ram 3500 4x4 (Black)
