Trying to decide If I gave up too quick. Terrible Dodge truck content.

So as some of you may remember(or maybe none of you, I'm not very memorable in the context of this site in my honest opinion), I bought a $400 Dodge truck a few months ago and made bold proclamations of trying for the $2017 Challenge with it. Since then I've had more time to look over what I bought and decided I may have jumped into a part of the pool I'm not ready to swim in yet.

What I have in front of me is a long bed Dodge truck with no floor, no brakes, a possibly junk V6, and a transmission that I don't trust either. Current budget would be at $400, most of what's on the truck sort of needs to be there for it to run, so I don't see much recoup happening. A lot of what I'm going to have to do to get this together would be stuff I would be doing for the first time.

I thought about all of this once before, and sort of decided it would probably find itself on the trailer to the scrap yard before too long.

Basically what I'm asking here. Should I try it anyway? The worst case scenario I'm seeing here is I scrap the truck anyway but after I learn a few things from it.

step 1: buy 1999 silverado with ls motor
step 2: remove silverado cab and bed. Sell for $$ if possible
step 3: put really cool dodge cab and body on silverado frame. since there are already no floors in the dodge, a bit of a chop and channel is already practically done for you

step 4: profit

It's a learning experience. Don't piss money down a hole, but freely piss time and effort down the hole.

Learning on something you give negative amounts of berkeley about is the best way to learn. You will need the skills as you progress in the hobby, and don't want to have to learn them when it matters.

I was thinking more along on the lines of patch the floors that I now know aren't actually as bad as I thought. put the cheapest V8/auto trans combo I can fit in it. flip the rear axle, cut the front springs, put heavier sway bars on it, remove a bit of unneeded sheet metal and put as much tire under it as I can manage.

EDIT:

In reply to Dusterb13. That's more or less what I was thinking. I figure at this point if I play my cards right, there is much of a way to lose any more on this thing. The obvious learning opportunity though is those floors.

There is always the possibility you'll spend a ton of time do the job well and still end up with something you hate. I gave up on my last K car not because I couldn't do it, but because I didn't want a K car anymore, no matter how fast it was, and I certainly didn't want to spend time or actual dollars working on something I didn't want.

I do have my other project that's still under $1k on the budget and I have more than 1 use for it after it's done.

It has just as small of a chance of being "good" as the Dodge, but I can drive this to work when it's done too. Also way closer to being done.

If I had an hour or $100 and both of those in front of me the Dodge would feel very lonley.

Most of my best learning experiences have come when I've been in completely over my head. Forces you to operate outside of your comfort zone and just figure stuff out. You're probably capable of more than you think, just haven't been pushed to do it yet.

I had my first experience doing floor repair on my XJ last year. It's not really that bad, as long as you don't care about it looking perfect, just time consuming. Get a pile of scrap sheet metal and go to town.

So basically just keep doing what I was doing, but keep a closer eye on what I'm putting into my Bravada V8 swap project and let the Dodge keep sitting where it is until scrap value goes back up a bit?

If you run out of all other projects before scrap goes back up, then yes, tackle the Dodge.

I've admitted defeat on selling the D350 and fully expect that to always be available as a project of some sort. So the white truck will probably just have it's bed filled with scrap metal and eventually hauled off if I don't make it a race truck.

Oh look it's already halfway ghettocet'd

Sell what you have for what you can and buy this and a 1200cc Japanese motorcycle.

Vespa !

Do cool stuff with that Bravada

the bravada is easy to lower, easy to v8 swap, is AWD, and has hot graphics. its hard to see a down side

The Bravada V8 swap is an in progress thing already. I'm collecting parts at the moment. Really the only thing I think I need to get is 350 related TBI parts.

What do you need?

ghetto patch the floors, convert to short bed, slap a 5.9 and a 5 speed in and drop it to the ground. Then after the challenge, rip out the 5.9 and 5 speed for next years car and scrap the body.

In reply to Dusterbd13:

Basically all the things that are different between a 4.3 setup and a 350 setup. I'm planning on taking a trip to pull-a-part tomorrow.

EDIT: realized it's thursday rather than friday, and I have today off somehow, so I'm actually going down now.

So I have an ECU, distributor that I'm not certain I'll need, throttle body/injectors, and the air box from a '93 Roadmaster because I'm strange and like the idea of using that instead of of the air cleaner that's on the 4.3 right now. Looks like all the injectors get snatched from TBI GMT400s but people forget about early 90s B-bodies. I started to grab the intake from an '88 C1500 but decided halfway through that it looks pretty damn close to the intake I have on my 350, so an adapter plate might be the smarter(cheaper) move.

Make sure that the adapter is thick.

Also, double check the ecm service number from the road master before using it. Make sure name service number so the pinouts are the same.

Use the distributor.

4.3 tbi body is the same as 5.7, injectors are different.

I have a few 5.7 tbi intakes kicking around if you wind up needing one.

the air cleaner Throttle and injectors came from the Roadmaster, the air cleaner says 5.7 on it.

ECU came from a '93 C2500 Suburban. Still probably need to check that number.

EDIT: brief googles seem to indicate that this would work...if my Bravada was a '92, time to check actual numbers to hopefully prove myself wrong.

EDIT: 16168625, apparently a PCM for a truck with a 4L60E.

4l60e ecm....

I have a couple.

What is your current, verified ecm number? I may have one....

While I probably should have pulled mine and looked for any numbers before I went buying parts. I haven't even found where it is on the truck yet. I'm going to have to dig for it some more tomorrow.

Should be behind the glove box. Accessible from under the dash. 10mm nut