How many of us are there? Owners of Dodge based RV's?

[whiteknight001]

I'm new here, and curious.

How many of us in Class C own Dodge B300 incomplete
cab/chassis based RV's? I know two others- Steve aka
Ripsaw, with a 1977 Brougham, and Leroy aka 1978_Dodge
_Delta who owns a 440V8 powered sharp looking 1978
Delta RV. I would like to ask, and offer, help, idea
swapping and comparing notes on our particular RV's
which are based on the Dodge B300 van chassis.

Yeah, I know. These are low tech, podgy old RV's that
would be considered "entry level" for folks like me,
but I have a deep and abiding respect for the quality
of these old "monsters of the open road". And anyone
wanting to pick brains, joke about, share notes or just
brag about our old A- Dodge-io's are certainly welcome
to PM or email me. Between all of us we can form a real
good support group, and help each other with problems
we know we'll encounter with an older vehicle.

Sure. I'd love a new RV. But I'd rather have an older
one already paid for, and a lotta great memories. Call
me frugal, an old hippie, or whatever you will. I'm proud
of my old land yacht.

Mopar Madness Manifest in the flesh,

Mark aka White Knight

P.S. Mine's a '72. Is there an older one out there someone's
motorvating in? Maybe even a Travco? W/K

[z89101]

Odd - tank sensors - 4 square pads on a linked wire and 4 sensors on elevation for each quarter capacity.

Old gray tank killed- I want to install a H42 roto tank.


I do not have any sensors.

Mirror the sensors on the black water I figure - where do I get 8 sensors for a 1978 MB400 Dodge Lindy bunkhouse 25 footer built by Skylines Lindy division>

the tabs are not like the ebay and amazon offerings - 1 inch by one inch - they then not fail -

Mike

[chinook440]

:R

[Griff_in_Fairba]

For those who have been waiting for my next post -- sorry for the delay. The various stuff for activities that were pending all came in at almost the same time so I've been busy making progress on a lot of projects. (As busy as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.)

Also, my posts have a secondary purpose, in addition to sharing information I have that may be useful to others. I've been toying with the idea of starting a writing career so these posts are serving as warm-up and practice.

I'll finish the 20+ mpg from a Class A motorhome arc before getting back to electrical systems --

Initial data:

-- 55 to 65 mph for majority (80-90%) of driving.
-- LT235/85R16 drive (rear axle) tires.
-- Dana 70 rear axle with 4.10 gear ratio.
-- LoadFlite A727 automatic transmission with 1:1 final (3rd) gear ratio.

Notes on initial data:

1. Based on past experience, I know a significant portion of the remaining 10-20% of operation (when not driving at highway speeds) will be off-the-pavement. Standard dual wheel rims limit tire selection so 85% aspect ratio provides the maximum tire diameter and, therefore, slightly better ground clearance.

2. The type of rear axle (Dana 70) is immaterial to these calculations. The rear axle gear ratio (4.10) is the important datum. Likewise, the transmission type (LoadFlite A727 automatic) is also immaterial, with the final gear ratio (1:1) being the important part. (Virtually all non-overdrive transmissions have a 1:1 final gear ratio.)

Calculations:

1. Number of tire revolutions per mile:

Some tire manufacturer and distributor's websites, such as Tire Rack .com, give the number of tire revolutions per mile. This is the best, and easiest, starting point for calculations. You can calculate the revolutions per mile using the tire's overall diameter or even the tire size (e.g., LT235/85R16) but the calculations are tedious and, at most, only approximate. Tire Rack .com's Tech Center provides lots of good information, in many areas in addition to tires. For our purposes, their "tire specs explained" page is especially useful, particularly the section on revolutions per mile. (This is not necessarily a Tire Rack .com endorsement -- it's simply a good place to find information.)

Tire Rack .com lists 655 revolutions per mile for one of the candidate tires in the size I've chosen.

2. Axleshaft revolutions per minute (RPM's):

Revolutions per mile (655) times miles per hour (55-65) divided by minutes per hour (60) equals axleshaft RPM's. The miles per hour is a range so we need to do two calculations to get the range of axleshaft RPM's.

655 x 55 / 60 = 600.42 axle shaft RPM's @ 55 MPH

655 x 65 / 60 = 709.58 axle shaft RPM's @ 65 MPH

3. Driveshaft revolutions per minute (RPM's):

The drive (rear) axle ratio is a gear reduction ratio between the driveshaft input and axleshaft output, so a 4.10 rear axle gear ratio means the driveshaft turn 4.1 times for each revolution of the axleshafts.

600.42 x 4.1 = 2461.722 RPM's, rounded to 2460 driveshaft RPM's @ 55 MPH

709.58 x 4.1 = 2909.278 RPM's, rounded to 2910 driveshaft RPM's @ 65 MPH

Note: I got the rear axle gear ratio from the data plate for the vehicle the rear axle came from -- the 41 stamped in the Rear Axle space indicates a 4.10 ratio.



However, with older vehicles it's always safe to assume a previous owner changed something so it's best to verify all information. With the rear axle on jack stands and the transmission in neutral, I put a mark on one tire and counted the number of times I had to turn the driveshaft (by hand) to cause the tire to make one complete revolution. The result was a little over four turns.

4. Engine revolutions per minute (RPM's):

A transmission final (3rd, 4th, or whatever is the highest gear) ratio of 1:1 means the engine turns the same number of RPMs as the driveshaft. So, I want a combination of engine components, modifications, and machining that results in an engine that's works most efficiently at 2460 to 2910 RPM's.

Note: Based on graphs I've seen, late '60's/early '70's Dodge small block LA 318 engines are designed and built with this RPM range in mind … so, keeping the engine original would be just fine. However, I'm not going to leave good-enough alone.

Overdrive transmissions have a different final ratio. For example, the addition of a Gear Vendors Under/Overdrive unit results in a final ration of .78:1. So, to determine engine RPM's you'd have to multiple the driveshaft RPM's by .78. Using our example, with this unit:

2461.722 x .78 = 1920.14316, rounded to 1920 engine RPM's @ 55 MPH

2909.278 x .78 = 2269.23684, rounded to 2270 engine RPM's @ 65 MPH

The RPM range we've calculated (2460-2910 RPM's) represents a balance between fuel economy and performance. In general, lower engine RPM's means better fuel economy. However, the improvement in fuel economy comes at the expense of high demand performance. The lower RPM range with a Gear Vendors unit (1920-2270 RPM's) creates issues when towing trailer, traversing a series of hills, or -- especially -- climbing mountain passes.

Vehicles that claim high mileage due to a drivetrain that lowers engine RPM's often get dismal ratings in independent reviews due to needing a lot of downshifting in hilly country, (In worst case scenario, the engine can bog down -- or even stall -- if the transmission isn't up to the task.) Towing a trailer through hilly country with an overdrive transmission (including one equipped with a Gear Vendors unit) can cause the transmission to "thrash" -- that is, downshift and upshift a lot, which is hard on clutches and bands. (The overdrive in my 1990 Ford E-150 is fairly good, especially compared to the A518 in my daughter's Dodge Van, but I still force it out of overdrive when dealing with steeper hills,)

Enough for now … in my next post I'll finish what I'm doing with the engine and drivetrain in my current project.

[Griff_in_Fairba]

Wolf_n_Kat wrote:
Sorry I haven't been active recently, had a few things to take care of (including yanking out the second stereo and six or eight speakers that the previous owner VERY sloppily installed!!).

I appeal to the combined genius of the folks on the forum - does anybody know where I can find a front emergency brake cable for my '74 Eldorado? I've hit all the auto and RV places in town and come up empty. Every time they've said "We've got it" and I've pulled out the tape measure, they come up in the 104" range. Unfortunately, what I need is a little closer to 171".

Any suggestions, short of "Pollack engineering"?

(my wife calls it that and she should know, considering she's of Polish ancestry! :E

There's some places on the internet that sells custom cables. For emergency brake cables, I'd start with Lokar.

There's other places that sell "specialty" cables, including one that sells pushbutton shift cables for late 50s/early 60s Mopar PowerFlite and TorqueFlite transmissions. (I don't have the name/website at hand right now -- it's buried somewhere in the huge pile of notes I've collected.)

[Wolf_n_Kat]

Sorry I haven't been active recently, had a few things to take care of (including yanking out the second stereo and six or eight speakers that the previous owner VERY sloppily installed!!).

I appeal to the combined genius of the folks on the forum - does anybody know where I can find a front emergency brake cable for my '74 Eldorado? I've hit all the auto and RV places in town and come up empty. Every time they've said "We've got it" and I've pulled out the tape measure, they come up in the 104" range. Unfortunately, what I need is a little closer to 171".

Any suggestions, short of "Pollack engineering"?

(my wife calls it that and she should know, considering she's of Polish ancestry! :E

[Griff_in_Fairba]

My wife just got back from a trip to town to buy more building materials and new winter tires for our van. She told me the tire salesman, while entering her info into the computer, suddenly looked up and asked, "Are you Griff's wife?"

I had already been told a significant number of CarQuest customers were expressing serious disappointment upon learning I had quit, although they were mostly understanding when they learned my resignation was mostly due to the job's adverse impact on my disabilities. (A few even indicated the only reason they shopped at the somewhat out-of-the-way Carquest store, as opposed to more convenient parts stores, was because of the knowledge I shared.)

However, I didn't realize the extent of my local reputation. I can honestly say I don't who the salesman is because I don't recall any specific contact with anyone working at that tire store. (Fairbanks is a relatively small town, with an active social "telegraph" but still ... )

[Griff_in_Fairba]

Mykedynamics wrote:
Thank you griff! Too bad California doesn't run that way...they're making a killing out here!

Eric

So, the smog test stations are owned, staffed, and operated by the state? If so, I imagine there's also a large bureaucracy for overseeing those stations.

The people of Alaska made it clear they didn't want to have to sit through another long line/waiting period to get an IM test, to only have to spend more time sitting in the DMV waiting room to get their plates and registration. They also objected to the possibility of the state adding a lot of bureaucrats to run the program and technicians to perform the tests to the state payroll, especially if some of the technicians would be sitting idle -- but still on the clock -- waiting for people to come in for a test.

In response to this resistance, someone realized there were a lot of commercial places, already servicing and repairing vehicles, that could do the test just as well. So, the state created a much, much, much smaller bureaucracy to oversee the program, hired a few more people to certify commercial test stations and technicians, and a few state-operated facilities for difficult cases.

Businesses got to grow and diversify their operation (with more customers), technicians who were certified got a pay raise, and people didn't have to wait for a test that usually only took 15-20 minutes. (If one station was backed up, there was usually another nearby.)

Initially, people had to get the test and then take the test results to DMV to finish their registration. Eventually, the state also handed the registration function off to some the IM stations, with those businesses charging a small added fee for the service, while heavily advertising the convenience of the added service.

Somewhere during the program's existence, a few stations initiated a "no pass, no pay" policy and most of the other stations had to follow suit just to keep up and avoid losing customers.

[Mykedynamics]

Thank you griff! Too bad California doesn't run that way...they're making a killing out here!

Eric

[Griff_in_Fairba]

Mykedynamics wrote:
Thanks for all the good stuff Griff! I was able to snag one of the EGr's from jersey parts..gave the beast a tune up last night and it's running wonderfully..I'll keep tuning over the next week then smog time!! Wish me luck and any tuning pointers to help with smog would be great!

Eric

You're welcome.

New sparkplugs, distributor cap, and distributor rotor. Check the timing, although the old engines with electronic ignition tended to stay on the timing mark once you set it.

New air filter and PCV valve. If the filter is dirty or the PCV stuck, they sometimes affected test results. Fresh air filter can also improve fuel mileage, depending on the condition of the old filter. A plugged/malfunctioning PCV (Positive Crankcase Ventilation/Valve/Vacuum) can adversely affect engine performance as well as fuel mileage. (The PCV system creates a partial vacuum in the crankcase, which makes it easier to move the pistons on the down stroke, allowing slightly more power to be sent to the transmission instead of being spent on engine operation.)

Fresh oil change and oil filter. Combustion fumes trapped in old oil can re-enter the intake via the PCV and might affect test results. Depending on how worn the piston rings are, small amounts of unburned fuel and combustion fumes leak past the rings and becomes trapped in the oil. These, in turn, combine with moisture to form acids that eat away at bearing and other internal engine parts when the vehicle sits idle. Frequent short trips allow the moisture and contaminates to build up in the oil, creating more acid which leads to greater internal corrosion. Occasional longer trips (20+ miles) at full operating temperature cause the moisture and contaminates to evaporate out of the oil and get drawn out of the crankcase via the PCV system. (Taking 20+ mile run just before the smog test will remove oil contaminates and increase your chances of passing.)

In Alaska, most (all?) test facilities operate on "no pass, no pay" basis. As a result, most IM technicians tend to fix any small problems, such as loose vacuum lines, they encounter during the inspection phase before conducting the emissions test.

[Leeann]

Bad/old gas absolutely will cause that issue.

If we park our rig for any amount of time, we add the appropriate amount of Marine Star-tron (it seems to help ethanol issues with older motors, too).

[goreds2]

goreds2 wrote:
I have been loving this thread going on 7 years now when I had my 1975 Class C. I now have (for 5 years) a 1989 Dodge XPLORER RV Class B with 318 engine. Today, I took it out on the open highway and at about 55 MPH it was shaking. I know it can be a number of things but just wondering if any owners of late 80's Dodges have experienced this. Thanks,

Note that I checked the tire pressure and they are read the same. (50-PSI)

I took my van out yesterday and it id not shake at all. Maybe is was older gas that was in the tank making it shake? I did put fresh gas in after the shaking was discovered two Saturdays ago. Whatever the reason, it seems to be alright now. Fingers crossed

[Mykedynamics]

Thanks for all the good stuff Griff! I was able to snag one of the EGr's from jersey parts..gave the beast a tune up last night and it's running wonderfully..I'll keep tuning over the next week then smog time!! Wish me luck and any tuning pointers to help with smog would be great!

Eric

[z89101]

We are ALL into mileage. Rehash the bias ply 16.5 vs the radial 16. Then the GV overdrive. Then the dana 60/70 gear swap...

I love money.:B We all want to keep it. MPG is KEY> Lubricants an issue of merit??

[Griff_in_Fairba]

In my previous post, I implied diving into a project, starting with the engine, is usually a mistake that frequently leads to less than satisfactory results.

Often, the root cause of much difficulty originates before anyone picks up a wrench or screwdriver, orders or purchases parts, or talks to the machine shop. All too often, people dive into a project without a good idea as to what they're trying to accomplish.

To avoid this problem, and increase your chances of success, you need to sit down and honestly think about what your needs are and what the vehicle needs to be able to do to satisfy those needs.

If you take this crucial first step and manage to get things right your first time out of the gate, congratulations, you've done better than me. (People who successfully complete projects without apparently taking this initial step simply know themselves well enough that they complete this step without conscious thought and effort.)

My current project is just the latest (and hopefully final) iteration in an effort that spans the last 45 years. Initially, my goals were vary vague because I really didn't know, and hadn't really thought about, what my needs and wants were. Experience over that time, via a wide variety of vehicles, allowed me to steadily refine my goals. However, the process of buying and selling various vehicles to figure out what I really wanted was unnecessarily expensive and time-consuming. (45 years! I'm sure nobody else, especially younger people, want to spend that much time trying to get things right.)

On my current project, one of the goals is to squeeze the maximum possible fuel economy out of the motorhome, without giving up a reasonable amount of power or reasonable speed. For the purposes of this project, reasonable amount of power is defined as being able to climb Turnagain or Thompson Pass without having to slow down significantly or having to downshift more than one gear. Likewise, reasonable speed is defined as being able to cruise for several hundred miles at speeds of 55 to 65 mph.

Well prior to buying the new heads, I picked the brains of many people whose opinion I respected to get a general idea as to how to proceed. These discussions included engine alternatives (318, 360, 383, and 440) as well other modifications that would help me achieve my fuel economy, power, and speed goals.

One person in particular, the manager of the local Schuck's/CSK/O'Reilly/whatever-their-name-is-this-week parts stores, provided a lot of guidance based the decades she spent in the southern California car culture. She recommended staying with the 318 I had with little or no internal modifications. (She even recommended I run tests to see if I really needed to rebuild the engine.) She also recommended switching to a small four-barrel carburetor, dual exhaust (although she said I should stay with the same size pipes), and consider Tri-Y headers. (She told me to stay with the stock exhaust manifolds is I couldn't find Tri-Y headers, pointing out that most readily available headers weren't really suited to my application and goals.)

Note: Once I decide to stay with the 318, different unleaded gas heads were a given ... I just happened to get lucky when I stumbled across a set of unused military-surplus heads on eBay. I only mentioned buying them (above) to provide a reference point in terms of the project timeline.

Once I established a basic framework to serve as a starting point, I began exploring various engine modification and component alternatives to narrow down the range of possibilities. That's when I ran into significant problems. No matter how much I searched and read, I couldn't find anything that gave sound indications whether any of the possibilities would help or hurt my efforts to achieve my goals.

That's when my systems analysis and design experience kicked in. Difficulties such as I was experiencing is a good sign I'm approaching the task from the wrong perspective. Simply put, whenever you find yourself in a quagmire of seemingly endless possibilities, without any sign of clear path out, it's an indication you're approaching the problem from the wrong angle.

A technical article on designing and building race engines to ensure they ran at RPMs close to the peak torque in their power bands provide a glimmer as to where I was going wrong. Engine torque follows a curve, which is part of the power band, that varies from one engine configuration to the next. (As engine RPMs increase, its torque also increases, up to a certain RPM, after which the torque drops off as RPMs continue to increase.) The rounded peak, located somewhere along the engine's RPM range, indicates the RPM at which the engine operates the most efficiently.

Suddenly the task got much easier. All I had to do was make sure the combination of engine components and modifications put the peak torque close to the RPM at which the engine was expected to operate.

The article addressed setting up cars to help win bracket races, so the discussion on each of the examples started with a target speed and tire circumference. (For those of you who were asleep in various classes, tire circumference is the distance around the outside of the tire.) The discussions then went on to include rear axle ratios and transmission output ratios (typically 1:1) to round out a set of calculations to match up peak torque with engine RPMs.

I quickly recognized the set of calculations in this article are effectively identical to those I had previous used to determine proper speedometer gears for various combinations of tire circumference and rear axle ratios.

I think I'll stop here for now. In my next post, I'll wrap this up with by walking through the calculations, as well as decisions on engine configuration that I believe will give the best chance at achieving my goals.

Before closing, the more knowledgeable people out there will realize I drastically simplified a complex discussion, so save your breath and resist the urge to nitpick.

For others, I recommend doing some research to verify what I said above. After all, I've been married for over 38 years so I've obviously been proven to be wrong at times. 😛

Finally, for those who are wondering why I'm going through all this trouble for what may turn out to be only a few mpg improvement in economy, consider this is just one aspect in a complex project. Also, consider engine manufacturers have to design their engines to suit the needs of a large, diverse group of customers. On the other hand, I have a rather limited need and can build an engine intended to suit that specific need.

[Ballenxj]

Griff in Fairbanks wrote:
What did you get?

Yeah, because inquiring minds want to know. 😉