Being gone the last couple of weeks and catching up on stuff when I got home, today was the first chance I had to get back to the Ram 50. There were just a couple of things left to do to make it run and I got those taken care of this morning.

The first thing on the list was getting the radiator hoses on…….I basically found some with the right bends and cut them down to fit.



Next was getting a battery cable over to the starter. As the starter is on the opposite side from the original starter, I had to go all the way around the engine compartment which took 11 feet of cable. On long runs like this I usually like to use Arc Welder Cable, it’s pricey but you don’t get near the voltage drop that normal battery cables that long have. Rather than have the cable hot all the time and also run a separate solenoid wire to the starter, I used a Ford type solenoid mounted by the battery, and built a jumper wire across the battery and solenoid at the starter. This way the cable to the starter is only hot when the starter is engaged.



My go to alternator on most swaps is still the old GM internal regulator 10SI. I’m going to also retain the original charcoal canister mostly as a place to connect the fuel tank vents too, but as that interfered with the alternator I had to relocate it in front of the overflow and washer bottles (I still need to run a section of rubber line from the hard line to the canister).



Once I had that done all that was left was adding fuel and anti-freeze and starting it. It fired right off (the exhaust sounds really good) and with a couple of exceptions everything worked well. There are way too many cops around to put it out on the street without registration and insurance (something I’ll take care of next week) so I didn’t go any further that up and down the driveway a couple of times to verify the clutch and brakes.

There were just a couple of minor issues. One was a minor fuel leak that just took tightening a fitting. The other was that once the engine started it would not shut off with the key. I’ve run into that before with the 10SIs. The alternator will feedback into the ignition system once it starts charging. The cure is simple….just a diode in the circuit. They make a near adapter that plugs in line to take care of the problem.



I’ve actually got a couple of them around here…….I just can’t find them. Being as how I’ve got a couple more on order now, I’ll probably come across them the same day as the new ones show up.

So anyway it was a pretty good day, and tomorrow I can pull it out of the shop to do some cleanup.


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