1951 3100 4BTA Cummins

[kirsch11]

So this project has been in my head for about 5 years when I was in college. I've been around AD trucks my whole life. I believe at one point my dad and brother had a combined 11 if I remember. Once I graduated college 2 years ago my dad gave me one of his parts truck to toy around with.

I never wanted to keep the stock and everyone is doing 350's or LS swaps, I haven't seen many with the 4cyl Cummins before especially in my area. Before the project started I found a 1984 S10 standard cab long box for the frame conversion. It had a v-6 with a 4-speed that I planned to keep in it for awhile. I had never driven a stick shift before so I had to learn pretty quick to make the 4hr drive home. The very day I got home I started taking it apart and was down to the frame in about a week or too. I was able to sell all of the parts that I wasn't using and got the frame for a profit. I bought a Code504 kit instead of building my own. My reasoning was that if I got into an accident all I needed to do was to unbolt the pieces and put them onto an new frame instead of cutting and then re-welding.

I had all of the components on the frame when I found a 1995 Fedex Van that had a 4BTA P-pump with a T-19 transmission for sale in my area. My dad and I went to pick up the truck on New Years Day. That was all fine and dandy but the drive home was -35 degrees and my dad was driving it home with no heat. Let's just say that we was pretty upset. As soon as we got it home I started taking it apart and had the engine out in about a week. I sold the remaining parts and got the engine for less then what I would pay somewhere else.

I had the engine running in April of last year after trying to figure out how to adapt the wiring harness. I bought an EZ Wiring 21-circuit and had parts of the Cummins harness as well. It took me about a month to draw up a diagram to make everything work. I had it just about driving at the beginning of June but I had some brake and tranny issues as well as a friend that was helping me out after work pass away suddenly. All those things together didn't help since I wasn't able to look at the project for some time. I finally got it running in the beginning of August and and it has about 220 miles so far.

The engine specs are that it is a 4BTA P-pump, it makes about 125HP and around 250 FT LBS stock. Hopefully this spring I can bump that up to around 400 HP and 800 FT LBS reliably. I also need to find an 2wd NV4500 since the T-19 won't be able to sustain that amount of power. I'm putting new rims and tires on as well, the rear tires will be 335/25R20's and the front 245/30R20. I'm going with an Aero dirt track style wheel.

I have had to come up with a lot of different ideas to get the engine to work in the frame and cab as well. I took inspiration from skymangs S10 Swap how to page. My phone did a factory reset in July so I lost the majority of my build pictures ;( If anyone has questions please feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer and take pictures for you.