The overland beater: Dodge 1500

[jpat30]

I just read through your build and man I haven't laughed like that in years. I can totally relate to the Money Pit scene where Tom Hanks is laughing like a lunatic. We have all been there at one time or another with this hobby. I actually had a 99 Ram Quad Cab that I bought new off the show room lot. White with the 318 and auto trans. Man I loved that truck! Anyway keep up the good work and I will keep following along

 

[kraven]

Thanks, jpat30! I'm glad you enjoyed it. I think if you're not having fun turning wrenches you're probably doing it wrong, except for the times when you need to throw a hammer or a wrench.

I actually have ridden this trainwreck into "what now?" town. I went out there and bled the brakes only to find that the hose wasn't bad. The caliper wasn't bad. It was just gassy and needed to vent through the bleeder.
Now it's all purged and seems to be braking well. I have no doubt some more air might find its way in, but I just save 40 bucks in parts. And more importantly, it runs, drives, stops, and steers.

I had 2 realizations:
1. I spent 3 months building a stock Ram. Not lifted. Not hot rodded. Just a stocker. It feels a little anti-climactic.
2. I'm like "what do I do now? Oh, yeah. Go adventuring and stuff."

It still needs some odds and ends like a cb and lights and battery hold down thingamabobbers, but I'm gonna rock and roll with it on the Trans Am trail pretty soon.

 

[kraven]

Got the new caliper and hose on the beater tonight. I was driving it around today to road test the transmixer, and noticed that it was still darting to the left when I braked.

I already had the caliper and hose, but took a pretty good look at the fluid and the hose, and was fairly assured that the hose was having an internal failure. Lots of braking delay, immediate braking lack, and then sticking. I drained the brake fluid and sure enough it was black. Blacker than the heart of a DMV employee.

I gotta say, for such a rolling pile of mechanical needs, Dodge built this truck pretty well for service related stuff. Except for that stupid plenum plate on the intake. The brake hose is a piece of cake to change. Very well engineered for service.
Big ups to Autozone for having a brake hose that actually fits the first time without any massaging and swearing. I got to the end of this job and it felt really weird to not have shouted 50 expletives for the neighbors to hear.

Hurray, brakes!

This weekend, I go to the junkyard that's having a 40 percent off sale and see if I can find some goodies.

Next fix on the truck: transmixer solenoids. They allegedly only last 80k miles or so. And I'll have the pan off anyway for the filter change.

 

[kraven]

"speak the devil's name, and he will appear!"- some superstitious medieval era Briton peasant

I had to jerk the intake off and do the stupid plenum gasket. I foiled the superstitious and nonsensical internetty claims that the bolts are simply too long and can't be properly torqued. These bolts bottom in the threads at the washers before they stop turning. So, there's that theory out the window.
I'm still looking for an Air-Gap or M1 to replace it with, so I'm not blowing 125 on the Hughes fix. It's stubborn and hopeful at the same time, but that's the horse I've chosen. I guess I'm riding it.
I read the FSM and the TSB on the plenum and followed the destructions for replacing the gasket. I had the Fel-Pro gasket laying around from the set I bought, and oddly never did the plenum while it was sitting around for TWO MONTHS off the truck. Boy am I stupid. El Stupido, if you're into the lingua Espana.

So, now I'm going to get some more intake gaskets and bolts, because the bolts are torque to yield. That's 30 bucks out the window. But the intake will be fixed, depending on who you ask. Hopefully the next time it comes off, it'll be getting thrown in the metal art pile.

Just for the sake of trivia, it still had the factory metal style gasket in it. Makes me think this engine is a replacement, the more I dig in an find factory gaskets and stuff on it. Or this truck is much lower mileage than I thought.

Ninjy edit!: I was standing there looking at the intake and had it all bolted up and loctited down. It occurs to me that for max reliability I should just go ahead and bite the bullet, put the alu plate on the plenum, and not have to do it again.

So, I ordered one off eBay and it'll be here in a couple of days. So, now I wait.

 

[justcuz]

I thought during the engine discussion you had changed the gasket and went with the shorter bolts.
That tin pan actually flexes and pulls oil into the intake?

 

[kraven]

The gasket blows out between the pan and intake, oddly. The pan is actually pretty rigid steel, which I didn't realize til I took it off. When the gasket dies it pulls vacuum from the lifter valley, where there's a lot of oil having a sock hop around the valvetrain. It's a weird, stupid, silly way to run a railroad, man. If I could find an air gap or M1, I'd be throwing that whole mess in the art scrap pile for metal sculpture duty.

My trans parts came in today, so I jerked the pan and filter to get the governor plate off.
Looks like the trans has been rebuilt at some point.
I ordered the solenoids, including the heavy duty Borg-Warner O/D solenoid that replaces the failure prone and significantly smaller stocker. These are recommended to be changed at 50,000 mile intervals, along with the spring in the accumulator (which likes to break and fail).
I didn't order the transducer (pressure sensor), so I ordered that and I'll wait on it.
There's also an upgraded accumulator spring that replaces the stock one with a double thickness of the spring diameter for longer life.
It's cheap and kind of easy to change, so I'm going to change that too.

The intake is still off and I'm waiting on those parts to come in. Should be back on the road and be ready to go next weekend. The trans pan leak was worrying me with the potential of doing some stream fording and water crossings on the Trans America Trail in TN. So, I really wanted to get that sealed up before I took it off roading. Glad I waited. The gasket was somehow missing about a 2 inch section where the bolt was missing. So, now it'll be all sealed up and ready to rock and roll.

 

[justcuz]

Would some type of form a gasket material work better than a factory gasket on the intake?
If the tin pan is pretty stout then the aftermarket aluminum must apply better clamping force to the gasket if it fixes the problem.

 

[kraven]

I think that's the issue. The alu does a better job of clamping force between bolts.

 

[Pntyrmvr]

Aluminum plate also expands and contracts at similar rate to the manifold. Steel will not thereby working on the gasket over time.


"Talk is cheap. Whiskey costs money."

 

[justcuz]

So maybe a non hardening silicone type sealer with the metal plate would allow some flexibility in the mating surfaces and survive.
Looking at the factory gasket, it appears to have some silicone type soft ribs between the bolts.

 

[kraven]

The factory is a kind of metal wafer thing. The Fel-Pro gasket is the one there with the built in sealer stuff.
Here's the difference you can see in a comparison.

Here's the aluminum from the side. Torqued and ready to rock.

And the Steel

You can see how the steel bows between fasteners and the alu piece doesn't. I guess that's why the alu plate is a permanent fix, when you pair it with a gasket that doesn't suck.

If you've found this post by searching for the terms magnum or plenum or dodge plenum, don't buy the Dorman installation kit. It's so cheap and sucky, one of the plenum bolts broke while I was torquing it to like 14 in/lbs. (!!!) Just awful quality. I seldom deviate from Fel-Pro or factory gaskets. Never gonna buy anymore Dorman gaskets again unless I have to.
Below you can see those super cheap presumably tty chromate bolts. They're lowest quality and the whole time I was torquing them I kept expecting they too would snap off. The end gaskets were some kind of silicone sandwiching a metal plate- like a cheap imitation of the factory bits. And the gaskets were like an open mic night impression of the fel-pros I had on there.
I left a sufficiently scathing review on Summit's site, but they have yet to post it.
Woulda, coulda, shoulda- I would have bought the edelbrock 7277 intake gaskets, a tb gasket, and siliconed the ends. I would have bought the mopar performance intake bolts on top of that. Maybe would have cost 15 or 20 bucks more and would have given me a lot more peace of mind. I still might do that. I'm not happy at all with this Dorman garbage, in case you couldn't tell.

Anyway, now I'm just waiting for the transducer to show up so I can finish up the trans and everything should be hunky dory in beaterville.

 

[kraven]

I should also mention that the guy I got the plenum plate from on ebay (289guy) makes a great product and ships super fast. Only $58 for it plus, like 9 shipping. Pretty good deal. It's cut with a water jet, so there's no burring or anything else to clean up. You pull it out of the box and bolt it on.

 

[kraven]

All is calm. All is bright.
Got the engine back together. Got the trans back together. Got the coolant and trans fluid burped. Drove it around the block.
And then the sky opened up just as I crammed the last needed quart of fluid into the dipstick tube.

 

[justcuz]

Good deal! We have not seen measurable rain for months.

 

[Trophycummins]

I had a 360 in my dakota that ate up those lower IM plates and warped them all to ****. I probably did the replacement 3 times. In the end I waterjet cut a plate similar to your aluminum one.