Rebuild old flatbed, or start from scratch?
I have a 18K GVRW truck with a 12 foot long Western flatbed on it, with a trashed wood deck. My plan is to drop my current short bed Six-Pac camper on it for a while, then replace it with a larger mo...
Forum Discussion
06Fargo wrote:
Hi urbex - swapping in a diesel - your gearing will be out of whack due to the lower governed rpmof the diesel...
In the olden days gasoline trucks would normally be governed around 3500 rpm.
Depending what your truck's rpm is at what speed you want to cruise at now, you could be looking at a big gearing difference in order to cruise a small diesel around 2000 rpm...
Depending on how many miles a year you intend to travel you might want to apply Red Green's Principle of Leave'er...
The current motor in it comes with factory net power ratings of 130HP/236lb-ft...roughly the same power that my 1991 Chevy S10 V6 had...it's not that I want to hang with the modern F350 at 80mph, but I also don't want to be slowing down to a crawl at the mere sight of a hill either...
If I make the assumption of a 6.33 high range gear, that puts me at 2834rpm at 65mph with the current OD gear of .82. If I were to switch to a transmission with a .65 OD gear, that moves my RPMs down to 2247 at 65mph.
Then, with a more powerful motor, I could likely switch out the rear end for one with higher gearing, say something around a 5.5 gear..that moves me to 1952rpm at 65mph (still utilizing the trans with the .65 OD)
Of course, this is all hypothetical at the moment, as I've yet to drive this truck at all other than on and off the trailer. Nor have I taken a tape measure to the engine bay to even see what I might be able to squeeze in there. That said, the current 4.3L I6 seems like a tiny little Honda motor in there, so I suspect that it wouldn't be a big deal to get something like an 8L diesel in there if I so chose.
