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Glad you found another truck, and I'm unfortunately completely unsurprised about your insurance troubles. Wackadoodles. Good luck with everything, you're making great headway.
Tomorrow this truck is coming home with me, officially starting up my Studebaker body swap project (again). I decided that I need to follow through with my original plan as part of the healing process after the fire. It's a '95 single cab short bed with a 5.2L V8, and a manual transmission. No apparent accidents and the paint appears decent with the exception of the hood. The body will be up for sale once it gets removed from the chassis. None of the work will start until shop 2.0 is finished, which may or may not be by the end of this year. The insurance company is taking their sweet time just finishing the investigation. So five weeks later, and I am still restricted from entering the building or touching any of it.
Your parting this thing out? 318 stick? You suck. Id love to have that truck as a daily. I wrecked my last 318 stick Dakota (a 93 that I converted to stick myself) and been kicking myself ever since
The 3 or 4 95-down Dakotas I see running around South of Chicago suburbs are worse than swiss cheese including my own current 96 club cab 318 4x4.
Are you at least using the power train in your project? Screw the LS
Last edited by volaredon; Aug 22, 2024 at 09:52 AM.
First off, it doesn't run. Second, the rear fenders are full of rubber tire dust - the last time this truck ran, it was abused with many burnouts. Apparently it has an intermittent electrical issue. All of this indicates that it is not a worthy candidate for saving the drivetrain. Two wheel drive, single cab, short beds are as rare as hen's teeth where I am. Most of them are 4WD. I had to go to another state just find this one. I suck? Well, okay... you are entitled to your opinion. Better yet, why don't you bring a trailer to Nevada and I will sell you the body and the drivetrain, and then you can be happy building up the truck you want. I will have a gantry crane to help you load it, or maybe even a two post lift, depending on the insurance settlement for the structure. But if you want to hate, go ahead, Makes absolutely no difference to me.
My opinion doesn't matter either but I think it's great to see pieces of 1st gen Daks being used for anything at all, including projects that use just the frames. 318 sticks aren't rare nor are they really all that special since matching numbers Daks will never be a thing (unless Shelby or Vert maybe), plus they can be DIY'd so easily and spare parts are plentiful, AND 360 swaps are dead easy too making the 318 quite the shrug... Besides that even if it was "rare", it's not mine to care about.
All Daks around me are rotted out too. If I wanted a nice one I'd go down south for it. As I did already for a frame.
I know! I already had one burn up in my shop fire. I will go with the same setup. I should have the structure settlement decided on by the end of next week.
This one ran once on a dyno... 544 hp, and 503 torque. Thus 8' of the frame was boxed in.
5.2 and a NV3500 or a LS and a T56........... I know which one I want!!! give me LS!
Then find an S10 to put it in not a Dakota
On the "you suck" comment I was joking...
And on the "most are 4wd " strangely most 86-97 Dakotas of any body configuration have been 2 wd around here.. . A 4wd like my 96 is and always has been a needle in a haystack in NE IL/NW IN
And sorry unless it's a mosquito fogger or has a rod hanging out no 318 will ever get "the shrug" here....
