Well, as most of you know, shortly after I acquired my ram, I had my plenum repaired. Last night on my way to school, I roll up to a stop light minding my own business when I hear a motor whine up and cackle down. I look over and see an 88 Chevy Silverado being driven with what looked like a 16-17 year old kid. I was just gonna ignore it, but I was being watched by a friend of mine behind me... I responded with a little rev of my own just to see what happened. Looked over and the kid was grinning.

After a quick visual look around for the fuzz, I decided to just see what would happen in a heads up rumble with this truck. Light turned green we both go wot and take off. I stopped at 60 since that's the speed limit. Left the Chevy in the dust, and of course, he had to do that," I lost, so I'll fly by like I won" move.

What ever.

He wanted to go again at the next light, but I wasn't paying him that much attention as I noticed that when I slowed to stop at the light, my oil gauge spiked low and tripped the low oil light. I thought," Great. I'm blowing oil all over the place". Turned down the radio and went to limp to the nearest auto store to pick some oil up. With out the tunes going, I heard that all familiar ping and vacuum leak that every ram owner has heard about. Clean words cannot describe what I was saying when I heard that.

I hopped inside to buy my oil, only bought one quart just to see where it was at. Dumped the whole thing in and I was back to the full mark. Now, I admit, I'm not the world's greatest about checking oil and other fluids on a vehicle that has no history of losing more than 1/2 quart between oil changes, but I had checked it a week before to see the oil condition. (Had just changed to oil and was curious)

So now Dodgey has a fresh oil change and a blown plenum. Great. Got home from class today and pulled the TB off. Got my inspection mirror out and a flash light and went looking. I now have a nice thick film of amber oil in the bottom of my intake.

I will be taking pics this time around, so we can update the DIY and what not. I was told that the repair was done with an Al plate, so we'll see if that's the case or not. If it was, we 2nd genners have a problem to address with the all miraculous Hughes kit.

 

oh no man that sucks

 

Yes, yes it does. I might also add for those of you that are going to say air gap, you are wasting your time. I can't bring myself to spend $500 for an intake manifold that I'm only going to put 10,000 miles on or so in the next few months only to realize that I will not be using the same motor when I make this into my project truck. Makes no sense to me, so we are going to patch and go.

 

whos to say you can't get the air gap now? its not like once you put it on the motor, you'll NEVER be able to take it back off again. once you get a new motor or build one up, you can always swap it over...just remember to keep the old kegger to leave with the old motor...i personally don't think its a waste of money at all. i think its in fact a pretty good investment not only for a mostly stock engine, but later on down the road, you can always use it for a more modified setup...

 

so you had the hughes plate on it and it blew again?

 

Um, that's just it.... The next motor going into this truck will not be a 318 or a 360....



From what I was told, yes. The deal was that it happened with in a week of ownership and my Grandmother footed the bill for the repair as I didn't have the time or the money to fix it myself.

 

Is it gonna be a 440?


That sucks to have to do it again.

This summer Im gonna fix the plenum give it a tune up and change the timing chain and add a couple other goodies why I'm that far in there.


Jeff

 

Time for that 440/727 you were talking about!

 

Well, I guess it's time to let the cat out of the bag. I'm working on some details on swapping the 318 out for a 440. It will be quite awhile from now, but still within the next 5-6 years. The plan before was to lay it down and wait until I was out of school. While that is still the plan, I went from having six more years in the can to having two. Being the way that is, I'll be able to tear into this a lot quicker than I had planned. It will be a long time in the making, but by the end, I'm hoping to have a truck that has street manners, but has just around 1000 at the crank. You try to push that on a small block magnum, and you'll see that crank go flying when you hammer on it the first time.

I have been conversing with RM_Indy, and we both agree that a 500 stroker on a 440 block would be just right as a 523 is a little much when looking at reliability and a 470 would be a waste of time.

Thanks be to you RM for the links and the advice. I'm sure I'll be bending your ear some more.

 

have you got one of those "magnet on a stick" tools for picking up dropped bolts. if so stick that down the open TB to see if the belly pan is steel or aluminum. if steel, you can get the hughes plate on order.