I have made a few posts on here over this past summer for what I think to be silly questions now but the answers on this forum have helped get me here today.
During my college’s summer break, I took on the project of turning our old water truck into my daily driver. I thought to myself, why the hell not.
First thing, I knew I had to do was get them old widowmakers off the back. Luckily I had remembered where an old viking 60 pole truck had been sitting since I was a little squirt. I struck a deal with the owner and got me another truck with some tubeless wheels on the back lucky for me.
The second thing I knew I had to do was get that old hoss up to reasonably safe highway speed at a decent rpm. I decided to go with an overdrive swap. I figured an nv4500 would be a fitting tranny for the 2ton.
I followed whateverpratt’s series of posts on how he swapped an nv4500 behind a 235. I give a whole lot of credit to his posts. He showed you how it could be done and gave very good pictures with steps he took.
I had an adapter plate made at the machine shop and drilled and tapped the holes. Had a couple other parts turned down, driveshaft shortened then voila, I had an overdrive big bolt.
After rebuilding the brake system and adding a dual reservoir master cylinder with booster from lmc truck, the old girl stops on a dime. I just bypassed the old hydrovac and the truck seems to do just as well.
Then it came to the part I was really looking forward to, driving the well fed chevy 220 miles back to college. Well she took that trip 65 mph no problem, except for the few steep west Texas grades that really tested that little 235 and knocked me all the way down to 25-30 mph.
Now that I’ve got her here, I’ve just been driving the dog out of it and learning a whole lot along the way. Many old timers come up asking about her and telling me about the ones they remember working the cotton fields with.
I have decided to use her to make me a couple dimes while I’m in school hauling off tree limbs and junk. As you could imagine it is quite suiting for a big bolt.
Seeing if anybody else daily drives their big bolt and to share my experience of turning the big goose into my grocery getter and offer a big deal of thanks to Mike B, 69cuda, and whateverpratt for all of the good information.
