I’ve owned this truck for 12 years. The first five years were spent disassembling, refurbishing and re-assembling it and the last seven years were spent driving it in the nicer weather, fetching items from Home Depot and visiting a couple local car shows. Recently I’ve had an itch to do something different with the drivetrain and was thinking about a big block gasser but then got turned on to the diesel scene. Coming out of the truck is a 73 350 and the original 58 transmission and going into the truck is a 97 Ford 7.3L Powerstroke turbo diesel with a ZF-5 transmission.
I have this swap posted on two Powerstroke forums but realized it may be of more interest here since it’s more about the truck than the drivetrain. The Powerstroke guys are enjoying it too but are less interested in the truck itself. Most of my write ups pertain to the modifications to the chassis and cab to stuff the engine in there and less about performance modifications to the engine.
I’ve taken quite a few pictures and several videos throughout the process and will start by posting the links to them. The videos are lengthy, but have a lot of details covered in them. The pictures are nice, but don’t tell the full story which is the reason I made the videos.
I just set the cab down on the chassis yesterday so figured this is a good time to post here since I’m in the final stretch of completing the project. Enjoy and let me know what you think.
