12ValveDakota
Diesel Smoke
- Joined
- Mar 12, 2009
- Messages
- 32
my understanding was that you could put the 6bt cummins in there without changing the firewall. am i wrong? i know the front end is gonna be harder, cuz of the need for room for radiators
i have this idea in my head of building a dakota too with a 6bt in there, and no intercooler, or a water-air intercooler...
I dont believe there is anyway to put a 6bt in a Dakota without major firewall and floorboard alterations. I may be proven wrong, it wont be the first or the last time that has happened!
As you can see from my pics (hopefully) the rear of my engine as I have it mounted is about even with the front bottom edge of the windshield. I decided this was as far back as I was going with it as I want to keep the windshield and dont want to have to pull the motor out or the cab off to pull the head if need be. In this picture you should be able to see that the motor is past the firewall about 6 inches. The entire back rocker cover is behind the old firewall plane.
Another picture with the tape measure shows the distance from the front of the balancer to the back of the lower core support. The angle of the camera dont really show the distance, but it is right at 6 inches. I have to cram the radiator and elec fans in that area. Well almost, I hope I can get a radiator that will fit between the uprights on the core support, if so the back of the radiator will be about even with the edge you see, so if I can do that I will have 6 inches between radiator and balancer. You notice the belt driven fan and support is gone, there just wasnt room for it had I wanted to run it.
The picture with the tranny pretty much speaks for itself. A trans as big as that NV4500 just aint going in a little Dakota body without floorboard cutting. I guess maybe if you did a major body lift off the frame you might could make it work, but even then I dont think your going to get the motor in the engine bay unless you lose a big part of the firewall.
I know the firewall and floorboard hole looks huge, and it is. On the drivers side I just had to keep cutting to get the starter, fuel filter and bell housing to clear. On the pass. side I went a little on the big side to have plenty of room. I am going to build alum. panels to cover it all back anyway so in this case bigger was better (and easier).
Byrl