86 D150 Slant 6 Towing and WWGRMD?

Addendum:  Just caught that you're new to towing.

Disregard my previous advice.  I tend to take risks because I tow very frequently and have a disproportionately large amount of experience.  I would suggest finding a more suitable tow pig.

spacecadet said:

I say purchase AAA 100 miles towing... 
 

They got wise to that.  The tow benefit doesn't kick in for X days now.

So lots to respond to here. 

I'll start off with I didn't look at this again until now, whoever has the squirrel picture and brought up proper equipment/trailer brakes won me over in not towing with the dodge.  

I was perfectly ok with going 55 the whole way and driving cautiously. What worried me was being able to stop effectively if I needed it. The truck stops fine empty but a trailer and a full size f-body would have been cutting it a little too close for a 4-5 hour drive without hitting traffic.  I'll have to wire in trailer brakes and make sure I have a working harness at a later date. Maneuvering a trailer is something I'll pick up the hang of on shorter trips within an hour or so of home. 

Perhaps I'd be a little more ballsy if it was going to Richmond and back but that's just not the case. DC traffic plain sucks and I'm sure philly can get a little nutty as well

Im usually pretty handy with a wrench these days and I wasn't scared at all of successfully road killing it back home. I just needed a ride there and some potential back up incase I needed to run to autozone for small parts.  I asked a local autocross Facebook group if anyone was feeling adventurous and some guy said he'd tow it on his way back home for $200. Score, car is being delivered tomorrow right when I should be walking out of work to go home. Been wanting one of these things for over 15 years now, it feels good

I towed to the challenge and back with unregistered dolly and racecar. Then I flat towed with unregistered race car. I think one time my race car was registered. My DD has a registration that expired last July. I towed my unregistered dolley with it on Thursday. I do register and inspect vehicles but it's honestly pretty arduous to keep up with it after a certain point of senselessly buying more cars, lol.  I can confidently say i put more money into the system than the average person, so there's that. Plus, unless they're impounding you they're basically just taking up a lot of your time to say "please mail my state money". Only Colorado has actually gotten Texas to threaten to suspend my license if I didn't pay them. The rest just sell the debt to collectors which i ignore. Maybe my 760 would be over 800 if i paid them?  berkeley if i care! I'll feel bad when i get pulled over for doing something actually dangerous. Ive probably been pulled over about 30-40 times in my life and I can't recall that a single one of them was over something dangerous. If you take a job as a cop you have basically a 100% chance of hurting way more people in the course of your life than I've hurt in all my years of driving so far (which is zero, so the best you can hope for is a tie). You just wait until they finish talking. 

Safety first, opinions somewhere way below that. Unless they're impounding you or arresting you, there's a high probability that all they're going to give you is their opinion, couched in the form of empty threats.  I think the whole argument about whether your insurance will bail on you in the case of an accident holds a lot more weight than whether you follow every nuance of every law of every state you pass through. 

Truck is 2wd, the Chevy 350 and th350 from the f body may make its way into the truck. Purists be dammed, the goal for the $700 truck was always to be utilitarian and more torque would be more better. I want a junkyard LS and a th400/4l80e for the firebird anyways

78 opel is an ascona b, I've posted on here a couple times asking for help. A couple gurus have always come to my aid. When it's time to get rid of a vehicle the Volvo will likely go but the turbo 2.3 drivetrain from it will likely stay...

It's not the orange one, but I did consider that one for parts. Thing was schwacked pretty good from the back. 

Is a D150 1/2 or 3/4 ton.

5 lug or 8 lug wheels?

If it's a 8 lug it is 3/4 ton and will have better brakes, likely adequate.

Any big hills on the trip?

In reply to bentwrench :

D150 is 5 lug 1/2 ton. D series trucks correspond with Ford F-Series trucks as far as those numbers go.

$200 for what I am guessing is 300 miles...score.  Well done.

Wow, I've never registered a dolly; make sure it has lights and pull whatever.?

TurboFocus said:

Truck is 2wd, the Chevy 350 and th350 from the f body may make its way into the truck. Purists be dammed, the goal for the $700 truck was always to be utilitarian and more torque would be more better. I want a junkyard LS and a th400/4l80e for the firebird anyways

 

78 opel is an ascona b, I've posted on here a couple times asking for help. A couple gurus have always come to my aid. When it's time to get rid of a vehicle the Volvo will likely go but the turbo 2.3 drivetrain from it will likely stay...

 

It's not the orange one, but I did consider that one for parts. Thing was schwacked pretty good from the back. 

Can you link me to the orange one?  My uncle sold his 78 firebird drag car to someone down there and it was a shot in the dark to see if it's the same car out of curiosity 

So I missed the idea of putting the 350 in the Dodge. I'm by no means a purist and will at some point build an LS powered square body, but that 350 into that truck is more than likely a waste of time and resources. 

In reply to Patrick :

It was on some facebook group. Fresh restore and the guy enjoyed it a little too much for only a few days

In reply to Daylan C :

Couple plates of steel, some time on a welder and a few coolant hoses?

Drive shaft shop seems like that would be the priciest bit

In reply to John Welsh :

Thanks!

In reply to TurboFocus :

Driveshaft will cost more than the drivetrain is worth.  You can get 5.9 Magnum drivetrain for $350 or less, and gain an overdrive at the same time.  Or you could get a 360/727 combo for even less.

Don't forget your exhaust, wiring, and shift linkage.

Daylan C said:

In reply to bentwrench :

D150 is 5 lug 1/2 ton. D series trucks correspond with Ford F-Series trucks as far as those numbers go.

Yup.  And to take it one step further, Dodge uses D and W like chevy uses C and K... both meaning 2wd and 4wd respectively.  Then the number after it denotes the weight class.  Anything starting with a 1 (like 100, 150, 1500) is half ton.

In reply to Curtis :

So many people don't know about the W so I see a lot of 4wd D150s listed for sale. 

I'm glad you didn't decide to tow it yourself. When will we see the build thread?

In reply to Cooter :

to do the whole thing or just balance?
never used a drive shaft shop before but I have a buddy who's a more than competent welder/fabricator that works for a few beers at most. I'd probably just end up paying for a balance and I dont count beer as an expense since I tend to buy by the case
exhaust can be janky and I've already collected a small spare metal collection somehow?
wiring would likely just be the starter and bare minimum stuff, gauges be mostly dammed... I want a gas gauge
havent thought of the shift linkage yet

that said, if a working 360 and trans combo could be had for $200 or less and bolts in easily that would be the button I'd choose.

In reply to Brett_Murphy :

I'm reluctant to say me too. I usually go off the deep end and enjoy trying new things but $200 vs a LONG drive in a truck that barely cuts it, sort of, without 'proper' equip and a new experience would've been a bit much. I'll make that stretch when I end up at the Richmond drag way with speed holes in the block, probably guided by youtube and a uhaul rental since im typically woefully under-prepared; McGyver hasnt failed me more than a couple times over the past couple years. Though the worst was time was really awkward since i was fixing some wiring on the side of an active race track with cars blowing past.

I could make a build thread, but I typically document my stuff on instagram... for my whole sub 100 followers. Car should be delivered in approx 20 hours, 52 min and 13 seconds from the time of this posting

What about turbocharging the slant and a bigger brake swap from a 3/4 ton? 

In reply to pres589 (djronnebaum) :

That's a GREAT build thread idea!

In reply to pres589 (djronnebaum) :

Carburetors suck tho....

Turbo is a good idea. Something like a gt40 would probably be ok? Not sure what turbo would work well for what I want.

Hey  I'm just the concepts guy here, don't ask me for details.  Agreed that port EFI would be a smart upgrade at the same time.

A call to Garrett would probably be the first move in getting the right turbo picked out.  Max boost by 3500 RPM or something sounds good to me.

Seems maybe T3?

I'm not sure of what the chamber design is like on a slant 6, nor am I familiar with their water jackets.

Where I'm going with this:  Turbo on an LS is great.  You can still do pump gas with 10psi and 9:1 because of aluminum, adequate water jackets, chamber design, and knock sensors.  Putting a turbo on something like (for instance) a flathead with no coolant passages and terrible chambers means 5 psi and 6:1 compression if you want to use pump gas, and even then the towing heat loads will make it detonate 4 seconds after you start up a hill.

I would just like to do some research on slants before I can get on the hairdryer bandwagon.