Competition Monster Mudder Coming Alive

[Morphious]

Thought I would post an update on the monster mudder I've been building in the shop. First race is in a month, still waiting on a few small parts to come in and getting the truck painted, but she is coming together.



The truck started off as a 1996 12 valve auto 4x4 extended cab long bed last fall, I'd originally planned on putting a 46 dodge power wagon body on it and shortening the truck, but time got away from me so I went with my second choice of changing it to a shortbed-regular cab truck.



Here is the original truck:



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The truck didn't run when I bought it, the p7100 was in pieces in a cardboard box rusted up. I first had to track down an injection pump, I ended up finding a used 215hp 913 pump for a decent price. I tested the compression in each of the cylinders and they were all within 10% of each other, the truck had 330k on the odometer. Once I got the pump installed, I went through some issue of getting it running right, I tested injectors and still wasn't getting enough fuel to the back 3 cylinders, turned out to be loose delivery valve holders on the injection pump. The truck would now start and run, next I needed to test out the transmission, it's been so muddy here and the 4x4 wouldn't engage on the axle, so I had to get it towed out of the muddy drive so I could run it down the county road and make sure the transmission worked ok. Once that was done, I started ordering tools and parts for the truck, I picked up a timing set and a few other specialty tools and started ordering Go-fast parts.



Here is the truck with it's new tires, they are 37" x 13" x 16" Super Swamper Boggers on factory wheels that were sanded, primed and painted flat black.



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Once the tires were on the truck, I started searching craigslist daily looking for a regular cab and short bed for it. I found a cab for 150. 00 and a short bed in decent shape for 250 with a good tailgate. We then started dismantling the truck



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To fit the short bed and regular cab on the truck, we needed to cut 36" out of the truck total to make them fit. We did a 20" cut under the cab and 16" from under the bed, here are a few pics of that:



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Continued:

 

[Morphious]

The truck now has a 118" wheelbase and should go through the mud much better than the longer truck would have with the weight better distributed.



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With the body back on, dash reinstalled, I put the new 60lb valve springs on both intake and exhaust sides, put a 4000GSK kit in, removed the AFC foot, cut a #100 plate from the stock fuel plate, removed the AC/Heater system and all it's components, removed the cruise and air bag items, removed the stock fuel tank, spare tire carrier, and anything else I could think of to lighten the truck.



For a turbo, I've decided to try a HE351VE variable geometry turbo off of a 6. 7 liter 07 to 09 truck, with manual control of the variable sleeve through a wastegate actuator. I bought T-3 and WMGT flanges and built an adapter to fit the turbo to the truck.



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We did have to cut the oil return hard line off and run a new longer hose, cut off the shock bolt that sticks up past the nut, and modify the hx40 downpipe I bought to get the flange at the right angle.



For injectors I went with a set of 5x14's from Jacob Kidd and set the timing on the truck to 16. 5 degrees.



The front axle has a cad hard lock on it from posi loc, and put a lock rite locker in the differential.



The rear is getting the spiders welded up on it.



I put a B&M Truck Megashifter in the cab to manually shift through the gears, a 10 gallon fuel cell and pyro and boost gauges in the cab.



I've still got to build mounts for the racing seats, install the 5pt harnesses, finish up the exhaust system (waiting on sharp 90's to route it for the stack), paint the truck and build front and back bumpers with clevis's on each end. The front end got a 2" leveling kit and I removed all but the main leaf and the 3rd leaf from the rear end. Hoping so shoot the primer and low gloss black paint this weekend on the truck if I can get all the little dents and dings taken care of. Here are a few more pics of what the truck currently looks like.



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This is after running the truck for a few minutes after getting it started after puting new injectors and timing the truck:

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Morph

 

[Crazy Horse]

Looks like your doing a good job. Lots of work. That short wheel base should do well in the mud. I look forward to seeing it complete.

 

[moparguy]

I'm betting the trucks been on the track by now. So,,,,,how'd it do.



Mud racing is popular in my neck of the woods and I've been thinking a ride like yours would be a less expensive build than a stock class Chev. Thing I don't know is if the lack of rpm would be a problem. Gears of course may solve that issue.



Great write-up and thanks for sharing.



PS, also what about the turbo, good outside the box thinking.



RR