Thread: 87 Ram 50 Engine Swap

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"..... there is a guy on Competitiondiesel.com that put a pretty sweet 12v 5.9 cummins in one of these......"

And I thought I was having challenges making room for the 283!!!!!



I pulled the mockup up motor and transmission out to do some more transmission tunnel massaging. While it was up in the air on stands I decided to go ahead and get the auxiliary gas tank installed.

This is the hole where the spare tire used to live and the home for the “new” tank. The truck will eventually have a bed cover and the spare will be kept in the bed.



It was a pretty simple matter to add 2 braces to the Ram 50 frame that run the length of the tank at the top like the factory 58 Chevy used. These braces are also what the straps connect to (when I set the tank aside 30 years ago fortunately I also kept the straps). In addition to attaching the braces to the existing crossmember on the frame I welded in an additional crossmember to the frame to provide an additional attaching point for the braces. Unfortunately the picture I took of the braces didn’t turn out and by the time I realized it I already had the tank bolted in.

I remember and miss the old days when we could get good non-ethanol gas and I lived in a bit cooler environment at a lower altitude. I could run a fuel line from the tank to the fuel pump and call it good. After a few times trying to get home with a vapor locking hot rod or hard starts at a gas station due to heat soak, I’ve been adding a fuel return line to just about everything I build.

A lot of the tanks I’ve used didn’t have provisions for the fuel return and I’ve either managed to find a sending unit that had the provision or welded a fitting to the tank. Of course the 58 Chevy tank didn’t have a fuel return line. After looking at this tank, I thought I’d try using a bulkhead fitting rather than weld a fitting to the tank. The only problem was the local hardware store I buy my brass fitting from didn’t have any bulkhead fittings. I had looked on line and found a couple, they were about $15 and would take a week or so to get here.

Being a bit impatient and cheap (something my wife has informed me are not necessarily qualities) when I saw the swamp cooler float assemblies on the shelf the gears started turning and for $5 I figured I could experiment a bit.




I cut the bulkhead and compression fitting section from the valve. One of the things I’d noticed over the years is that most factory return lines actually extend into the fuel when they return to the tank…….the only reason I can think of is possibly to cut down on aerating the fuel…….I figure the engineers do it for a reason so I extended this one also. All it took was just running a 1/4” drill bit all the way thru the fitting. I doesn’t affect the compression fitting sealing area and only takes a few seconds to do. I even found a couple of fuel resistant gaskets that were the right size in the leftovers from a carb kit. I drilled a hole in the tank and fished the fitting in thru the sending unit hole.






With all that done it was simply put the tank in place and strap it in. Except for the fresh paint on the straps and new anti-squeak strips it kind of looks like it’s been there all its life. It tucks up nicely into the frame and unless you actually crawl underneath you can’t see it’s there (just as it should be).



All that’s left now is to cut the hole for the filler neck and add the fold down license plate holder.


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