Thread: Red Ram Hemi

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Hi Mark, a little bit about my 37 Dodge PU. I bought it as a basket case that someone had lost intrest in after they had installed a Mustang II front end (surprisingly well considering the rest of the truck), 2.8 V6 Ford, C3 and 4 bolt 8" rear end in. They had torched out a large part of the firewall (I don't have a clue why) pulled the steering column and cut a hole in the glove box door for a cheap tape deck and thats about as far as they got.

Most of the hotrodded 37 Dodge Pickups I've seen (all of them small block chevy conversions) have the engine sitting very low. I suspect the major reason is to retain the flat cab floor and not have to build a tranny tunnel. When I trial fit the Hemi and SB 727 I tried to get the centerline of the crank close to it's original location (as eyeballed from the manual crank hole in the grill). Another goal for me was to center the fan close to the center of the radiator. This resulted in the height of the engine being where it ended up at. Any lower would have resulted in more fender material having to be removed, and any higher would have resulted a bigger transmission tunnel having to be fabricated (lessening the foot room in the cab).

Where the engine sits resulted in the following. The valve covers (20" long) are as close to the firewall as I could get then (about 1/2" away) The widest point of the engine that has to clear the front fenders (just above the valve covers) is 27" wide, and the trimming I did on the front fenders resulted in the hole being 29" at it's widest point (as you can see the resuilting cuts were tapered and about 3" deep at the widest point). The front edge of the cut is 9 1/2" from the very rear edge of the grill shell.

The picture of the truck I post is when I was pretty much done mocking up everything. It is currently a back burner project while I concentrate on building my 57 Plymouth. I do have the steering column and linkage figured out and mocked up (although it may get changed as I'm going to use headers instead of manifolds), and the swing peddle and bracket has been fabricated and master cylinder located on the firewall. Once I get back to it, I'll be boxing the frame, building a new fire wall, edging the fenders where they were trimmed etc etc.

Anyway, any help I can give you, I'll do my best.