So, the '85 Dodge crew cab used to move me back to SD after the Navy, the one involved in the deer accident at 70mph on the Ohio turnpike while pulling a 35' trailer, is finally getting rehabilitated this month.

Being an '85, the biggest engine Dodge had available to them was the mighty 360 V-8, not a bad motor for a 1/2 ton pickup but woefully inadequate for a crew-cab dually 1-ton. When I made the first trip to SD in it it was also obvious that the particular 360 in the truck was well past it's prime, so it was swapped out with one my father had just removed from one of his trucks and it made the next two trips on that motor. Shortly after the last trip the engine was sold off, and the truck has been sitting sans engine for the last few years.

The obviously easy answer would have been to install the rebuilt 440 I had from my previous '85 Dodge crew-cab and just run it. That probably would have happened if I had not run across the truck I always wanted to have, a 1970 Dodge crew-cab Camper Special, already equipped with a big-block 383. So the 440 has been working it's way into the '70, and the '85 continued to languish.

Then I located a motor claimed to be low mileage that seemed a perfect fit for the truck, a 413 Dodge industrial motor form a mobile home. This motor was dropped into the '85 only to slap me in the face with exhaust manifolds too wide to clear the frame. Since the industrial motors have a unique set of heads exclusive to them, and the manifold bolt pattern is different, regular manifolds couldn't be swapped on without swapping out everything above the short block.

So it sat for over a year with the motor sitting in place and not hooked up until early this month. Since the layout in the '70 is completely different with the solid front axle as opposed to the '85's IFS, the frame on that truck will accommodate the wider manifolds of the industrial motor. Sure the heads aren't the best possible ones for flow, but they are better then the '64 413 wedge ones that were on the 440, so it shouldn't effect performance on that motor too much, except for maybe lowering the compression ratio just a bit, which would be a good thing. (The pistons in the 440 motor were set-up for 9.75:1 or so, which was just a bit too much during long pulls when warmed up on bad gas.) The regular big block heads would then be installed on the 413, raising it's compression just a bit from the 7.5:1 or so it has, and both trucks should be heading down the highway under their own power next week.

The first part of the change is already done, the 413 heads have been installed on the 440 and everything hooked up. Ran into a snag with the oil pan sump needing to be in the front to clear the exhaust y-pipe, and the sump pickup being a bit long with the adapter fitting the machine shop installed in the block. The new pick-up is shortened and rethreaded, though, so the oil pan is on and the manifolds are hooked up, so we're a couple of belts and a lower rad hose away from the motor firing up. The regular heads needed new exhaust valves and some hardened seats installed, but they are back from the machine shop and look great, so that will be going together next weekend.

So, anyone need a newly big-block equipped '85 Dodge?