The Mopar connection
While I was burning through imported cars faster than shoes in High School the one constant around the farm was an old Dodge truck. Seldom the same Dodge truck, as my dad was going through them faster even than I was with cars, but there was always at least one truck around to do those farm things that need to be done. As a general rule Dad stuck to the '61-'71 Sweptline vintage of trucks, but once in a while we would move up to one of the '72-'82 body-style for a while.
We ran the gambit with these trucks: long and short bed, standard, club, and crew cabs, step-sides or not, the entire line of engines and transmissions. Dad tended to gravitate to short-box, step-side trucks whereas I tended to prefer long beds myself. Almost universally the trucks belonged to my Dad, but there were a couple that he never drove that were for the most part "my" trucks. This was way back before the Cummins motors were put in Dodge trucks too, back when the 360 was the biggest motor they had available after the government bailout, back when it was not even a tiny bit cool to be driving a Dodge.
The history with the Dodge trucks goes way back, well before I got my own first car. At 11 Dad and I towed home one particular '60's short box truck with some weird modifications. Seems the previous owner had swapped in a Dart rear axle for the taller, more highway oriented gearing, but it was really too narrow for the truck. Besides looking a bit funny, wheels all tucked in and such, the tires would rub the inner edges of the fender wells if you put any sort of load in the back. Looking back the axle must have been a Chrysler 8 3/4, which would have been a pretty hard to come by axle for a Dart, worth some $ now, but then all I knew was that it didn't work right in the truck and that Dad wanted to swap the truck axle back lamented losing the gear ratio from the Dart axle which he actually preferred.
At the time Dad was working an evening shift, 3-11:30 pm or so, and I hardly ever saw him while in school. The truck he was actually driving at the time was a '69 Crew-cab Camper Special with a short box, one that I had helped him swap motors on years before and which I currently now own the cab from some 20 years later. At the time it was not particularly reliable, though I forget the specifics. After one weekend of wrenching on the driver truck just to keep it going, listening to Dad bemoan how he wished the other truck was running, I decided it was time to do something about it.
I proceeded to remove the Dart axle from underneath the back of that truck. Turns out the truck axle I was putting back in was also a Chrysler 8 3/4, but everyone had told Dad that the trucks used coarse and the Darts used fine splines on the axles so the differentials couldn't be swapped. (It might have been the other way around, it was well over 20 years ago after-all.) Once they were both out, though, it's a pretty simple matter to swap spider gears, and with a manual around I was able to check clearances and bolt it all back together just the way Dad wished it had been done. It went back together and to the best of my knowledge the rear end was never an issue again with that truck.
That was one of the very first major operations I did on an automobile by myself. Since then I've swapped out scores of axles, more motors and transmissions than I could begin to count, and done pretty much everything that can be done to a car. It was that differential, that Mopar differential, that started the snowball rolling though. I still have a soft spot for the old Dodges, and have my own Crew-cab Camper Special, but at least now they're sort of cool.
(My father still owns this truck, in 1994 I drove it from SD to Houston, TX towing a trailer to fetch a car and had not a single bit of trouble. It doesn't look like much, but I could hop in it tomorrow and drive it anywhere.)
We ran the gambit with these trucks: long and short bed, standard, club, and crew cabs, step-sides or not, the entire line of engines and transmissions. Dad tended to gravitate to short-box, step-side trucks whereas I tended to prefer long beds myself. Almost universally the trucks belonged to my Dad, but there were a couple that he never drove that were for the most part "my" trucks. This was way back before the Cummins motors were put in Dodge trucks too, back when the 360 was the biggest motor they had available after the government bailout, back when it was not even a tiny bit cool to be driving a Dodge.
The history with the Dodge trucks goes way back, well before I got my own first car. At 11 Dad and I towed home one particular '60's short box truck with some weird modifications. Seems the previous owner had swapped in a Dart rear axle for the taller, more highway oriented gearing, but it was really too narrow for the truck. Besides looking a bit funny, wheels all tucked in and such, the tires would rub the inner edges of the fender wells if you put any sort of load in the back. Looking back the axle must have been a Chrysler 8 3/4, which would have been a pretty hard to come by axle for a Dart, worth some $ now, but then all I knew was that it didn't work right in the truck and that Dad wanted to swap the truck axle back lamented losing the gear ratio from the Dart axle which he actually preferred.
At the time Dad was working an evening shift, 3-11:30 pm or so, and I hardly ever saw him while in school. The truck he was actually driving at the time was a '69 Crew-cab Camper Special with a short box, one that I had helped him swap motors on years before and which I currently now own the cab from some 20 years later. At the time it was not particularly reliable, though I forget the specifics. After one weekend of wrenching on the driver truck just to keep it going, listening to Dad bemoan how he wished the other truck was running, I decided it was time to do something about it.
I proceeded to remove the Dart axle from underneath the back of that truck. Turns out the truck axle I was putting back in was also a Chrysler 8 3/4, but everyone had told Dad that the trucks used coarse and the Darts used fine splines on the axles so the differentials couldn't be swapped. (It might have been the other way around, it was well over 20 years ago after-all.) Once they were both out, though, it's a pretty simple matter to swap spider gears, and with a manual around I was able to check clearances and bolt it all back together just the way Dad wished it had been done. It went back together and to the best of my knowledge the rear end was never an issue again with that truck.
That was one of the very first major operations I did on an automobile by myself. Since then I've swapped out scores of axles, more motors and transmissions than I could begin to count, and done pretty much everything that can be done to a car. It was that differential, that Mopar differential, that started the snowball rolling though. I still have a soft spot for the old Dodges, and have my own Crew-cab Camper Special, but at least now they're sort of cool.
(My father still owns this truck, in 1994 I drove it from SD to Houston, TX towing a trailer to fetch a car and had not a single bit of trouble. It doesn't look like much, but I could hop in it tomorrow and drive it anywhere.)
posted by Stephen at 8:27 PM
<< Home