Thread: Junkyard rescue of an '87 Dodge Power Ram 50

Fuel tank is empty. Lol

I would be trading my rear glass for his, because it's coming from a parts truck that the guy plans on keeping around.

I've already started spraying the truck down with spider killer, tomorrow I'll be spraying the underside and working on wrapping up the rest of the small details.

Success by Ben Stryker, on Flickr

That is what success looks like.

I got those broken bolts out finally, one of them took the nut with it. Don't care.

I got the shock bolted in, got the torsion bars aligned and cranked up as high as they can go, and took the truck down off the jackstands.

Then I did a silly thing...

2019-04-19_08-27-14 by Ben Stryker, on Flickr

I don't think this truck will actually go fast enough to need those hood pins, but I felt like it was necessary. I bled for those too, a tiny sliver of metal caught the tip of my finger.

Tomorrow will be the maiden voyage. I've finished everything I need to in order to drive the truck, the only things left are cleaning and the tires.

I've decided I'll be putting the old door cards back on for now, it's going to be a while before I can make new ones, and I'm in a hurry to get this thing on the road. I will be modifying the old ones slightly, just removing the extra vinyl from the top where it's cracked and leaving the top edge of the door as painted metal. I'll post pictures once I've got them back on.

I'm excited.

Did a few things to the truck, there's not much left to do anymore. I pulled the horn apart, it was corroded and dirty and the foam isolator pad was basically turned to dust. Shop towels and Super 77 work just fine to make a new isolator. lol

2019-04-24_11-01-38 by Ben Stryker, on Flickr

That's when I realized the horn sounded weak, this truck needed a little bit more bark.

2019-04-24_11-01-47 by Ben Stryker, on Flickr

And I mounted the cheap off-road lights that came with the truck, they aren't great quality but at least one of them is nice and bright. I still need to wire up a relay and mount a switch inside the cab, but the lights are there and look halfway alright.

Yes, they look crooked. I hadn't tightened them down yet in this pic.

2019-04-24_11-01-58 by Ben Stryker, on Flickr

Haven't driven it yet, it's been a busy couple of weeks and I need an extra hand to finish the last two things. The truck does run and will move under it's own power, but the timing is still off just a little and the brakes need bled (again) before I'll drive it on the street.

I work all this weekend, but I'll have Monday and Tuesday off. Monday I'll have an extra set of hands to help me with both of those, and Tuesday I'll (hopefully) be able to get the new tires on and start driving it.

I washed it today.

2019-04-29_07-13-33 by Ben Stryker, on Flickr

2019-04-29_07-14-02 by Ben Stryker, on Flickr

2019-04-29_07-14-10 by Ben Stryker, on Flickr

2019-04-29_07-15-32 by Ben Stryker, on Flickr

2019-04-29_07-13-46 by Ben Stryker, on Flickr

It's still rough as hell, but tomorrow I will have that extra pair of hands and be able to get everything done on the truck.

Not bad, aside from the rockers. Even if patch pieces aren't available, it doesn't look like they would be too hard to duplicate with a shear and brake.

They're rusted worse than they look. Lol this truck has Bondo over rust in quite a few places, and the bed was beat to hell and is now half body filler. The paint job that was done before had zero prep work and is peeling all over, but the color match was on point so it's not super obvious.

I've got rocker panels that are for the larger Dodge trucks and Ramchargers, they match the curve of the rockers but that's about it.

My plan is to either use that sheet metal to make new rockers, or just put some 3x5 rectangular tubing in their place as rock sliders.

Both of those options will have to wait a little bit, as a welder is required for both and the truck doesn't need rockers to drive.

Update! Took the truck on a test drive, if it can be called that....

I made it less than 10 feet before deciding to pull it back into the garage. Zero brakes, zero parking/emergency brake, and a few too many backfires. (I still haven't adjusted the carb or set the ignition timing)

So I decided to finally open up Schrodinger's drum brakes and find out if the cat was dead or alive... Definitely dead.

Driver side

IMG_20190509_211938166 by Ben Stryker, on Flickr

IMG_20190509_211948526 by Ben Stryker, on Flickr

IMG_20190509_222228215 by Ben Stryker, on Flickr

Passenger side

IMG_20190509_211820701 by Ben Stryker, on Flickr

IMG_20190509_211901835 by Ben Stryker, on Flickr

IMG_20190509_222247848 by Ben Stryker, on Flickr

The drums measured at 1/16" over the maximum, and the backing plates are extra crusty and rotted away at the edges. This is going to end up being really fun....

But my taylor wires came in yesterday, and I got those on the truck last night...

2019-05-11_01-00-55 by Ben Stryker, on Flickr

I'm quite proud of the routing, and the zip-tie plug wire separators. It just needs a legit cleaning and it'll look great. lol

IMG_20190517_181603082 by Ben Stryker, on Flickr

IMG_20190517_200139199 by Ben Stryker, on Flickr

Drum brakes are done. My hands hurt.

you need some,,,,,, well a lot of that rust killer stuff. you knock off the loose crap, then brush it on the frame and anything rusted, it drys black and stops the rust in its tracks.

I'm not worried about it that much, because this truck isn't going to stay stock. The front half of the frame has barely any rust, and most of it is surface rust. Once I have another decent body and frame, the drivetrain from this one will be yanked out either stabbed into the new truck or rebuilt for a spare.

That's when I plan on buying some 2"x3" rectangular tube and a welder, build a new rear section of the frame. I'll have a set of one ton axles by that point, and I'll be able to plan for and build the spring perches for them.

The most I'll do right now is plate the current spring perches and the one hole in the frame, but I'm not going to put a ton of extra effort into the parts that I'm planning on just cutting off later.

Besides, who needs bump stops?

I pulled the truck out to get it started and tuned, and I witnessed the slow, painful death of the electronic pickup inside the distributor. It barely ran at first, then it spit and sputtered and backfired, and right after I pulled the coil wire off the cap and tested the spark (thin and yellow, btw) it stopped sparking completely.

I pulled the pickup out of the distributor and tested it, multi-meter reads about 3 million ohms... It's dead. New one is about $75-$100, but I did find a cheapo chinese knockoff for $15. I figure if it doesn't work, I'm only out $15.

My other option is to buy the MSD magnetic pickup for $28, but I'd have to grind it in a few places to make it fit the distributor. The reason for this is to be able to use a MSD 6A digital box and have all of the mpgs and horsepowers. But it's pretty involved and will require a lot of very careful cutting, drilling and grinding to make it fit and function. I don't know if there is a different pickup that will fit and still trigger the MSD box, but I'm still looking and doing research. It's unlikely that I'll try this right now. But it's an option.

On another note, I pulled apart the wiper motor and found about half a pound of grease, scored and slightly burnt brush contacts, and one of the magnets inside the housing had separated from the housing and was stuck to the motor armature itself. Some epoxy to keep the magnet where it belongs, some 600 grit sandpaper to clean up the contact surfaces, and I'll have a rebuilt wiper motor. Still not sure what grease I want to put in it, but the crap that had been packed into it was yellow and smelled terrible. I might paint the housing, depends on when I get around to putting it back together.

And finally, I pulled the 2WD parking cable off and put the correct length 4WD parking brake cable on. Now that the lever underneath the truck has full range of motion, it kinda sticks a little bit right at the end. I just need to take the lever assembly apart, clean all the rust off the pins and moving parts, lube it and put it back together.

But the parking brake does keep the truck from rolling now, when it wouldn't before.

2019-06-07_09-11-25 by Ben Stryker, on Flickr

After getting the correct front parking brake cable on, the third time I pulled the lever I heard two pops and these little buggers were on the ground under the truck... Looks like I'm gonna need another two cables. Because mine is 4WD and 105" wheelbase, the rear passenger side cable is near impossible to find and I'm looking at almost $100 for new cables. But I did get the lever off, and I'll clean it up before re-installing.

I also found out that the Haynes manual I have shows the wrong firing order for my engine. It's supposed to be 1,3,4,2 instead of the 1,2,3,4 that the book shows. I still haven't tried starting the truck with the new $15 ICM, but it's reading the same ohms as the old one so I don't know if it's even good. I'm gonna try the old one again with the correct firing order, if it runs I'll try the new one as well. If both work I'll have a spare... If neither work I'll be forking out $80 for another new one.

I'm (hopefully) going to try and get it started tomorrow, but without a parking brake I'm gonna need a chock block or two if I try and drive it anywhere. Being on night shift and having to sleep during the day changes things. lol

I did manage to organize some of the wiring under the hood, it's not pretty but it is better than before. I also moved the lights to the original "stock" position and I like them being there much better than where I had them before.

Oh, and the wiper motor is still just one speed, I'm gonna go junkyard hunting for one next chance I get. It is much stronger in the low speed setting though, which does kinda validate all the effort that went into it.

I got everything wired back up correctly, after pouring over old threads and doing A LOT of research...

The only things I have left is to re-do the ground for the fuel pump relay and try to rig/repair the parking brake cables temporarily. It's gonna take a while to find new ones.

But I've also got some maintenance to do on the wife's car, but that should only be fluids, filters and maybe spark plugs. It's getting close to 30k miles, and I don't know what the plugs look like yet.

plugs wtf, they should be good for 100k