The Stovebolt Site Forums The Parking Lot Big Bolts QUESTIONS ABOUT 1985 ISUZU NPR FRAME & ENGINE

HI ALL, SEASONS GREETINGS; PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF MY POST SHOULD BE SOME WERE ELSE?

I LOOKED AT A 1985 ISUZU NPR TODAY. I WOULD GUESS IT IS A 1 TON? IT IS A 14' FLATBED, 8 LUG IN REAR, 5 LUG IN FRONT. FRONT LEAF SPRINGS SUSPENSION, 3.9 DIESEL (NO TURBO) & FIVE SPEED TRAN. THAT'S ALL I KNOW ABOUT IT SO FAR. THE OWNER JUST PURCHASED IT, WITH 200,000 MILES ON IT. IT RUNS GOOD, SHIFTS GOOD, BUT SMOKES WHITE SMOKE, (A LOT).
I AM LOOKING AT IT FOR A DONNER TRUCK. I HAVE A 1939 CHEVY COE CAB & SHORT TOW TRUCK BOX. RECENTLY I PURCHASED A 1980 P30 FRAME WITH INDEPENDENT FRONT SUSPENSION WITH DISC BRAKES. NEXT I PURCHASED A FORD FULL FLOATING REAR END WITH 354 GEARS. BUT I STILL HAVE NO MOTOR/TRANS. SO I AM THINKING THAT MAYBE I SHOULD PURCHASE THIS TRUCK & START ALL OVER WITH THE 85 ISUZU COMPLETE CHASSIS & RUNNING GEAR.
FIRST QUESTION WOULD BE, IS THE FRAME THE SAME AS MY P30 FRAME? CAN I ADD MY P30's INDEPENDENT FRONT SUSPENSION TO THE ISUZU FRAME? NEXT QUESTION WOULD BE, DOES ANY ONE KNOW THE REAR END GEAR RATIO IN THE ISUZU?
I MAY BE ABLE TO PICK THIS TRUCK UP FOR AROUND $5 BILLS & IT WOULD BE NICE TO HAVE MY HOLE RUNNING GEAR ALL FROM ONE YEAR / MODEL, FOR FUTURE REPAIRS & MAINTENANCE. ALSO, I DON'T HAVE A MOTOR/TRANS AS YET & EVEN IF I NEED TO REBUILD THIS ONE, I WILL HAVE A GOOD FUEL ECONOMY DRIVER. WERE I PROBABLY WOULD HAD ENDED UP WITH A 350 OR SOME OTHER GAS GUZZLER RIG WHEN I'M DONE. ALSO, THIS TRUCK IS ALL THERE WERE I WILL BE BUYING EVERYTHING I NEED ONE PIECE AT A TIME & TAKING FOR EVER RESEARCHING EACH PART NEEDED TO DO THE SAME THING.
IF ANY ONE HAS ANY KNOWLEDGE OF 1985 ISUZU , PLEASE LET ME PICK YOUR BRAIN A LITTLE. I KNOW I WILL SPEND MORE THAN THE $5OO. TO GET A GOOD MOTOR/TRANS/RADIATOR/ALL THE OTHER LITTLE STUFF I NEED, WERE IT IS ALL IN THIS ONE PACKAGE...

Hy OLDSCHOOL CHEV, why all the yelling on Christmas eve? Why don't you ask the current owner about the trucks top speed, I'm sure it will be geared to cruise along with todays freeway traffic. Merry Christmas!

3b, I'm sorry if I sound like I'm yelling? I hope no one else reading my post thinks i,m angry, LOL. maybe it was my cap letters that bothered you, sorry???
The owner bought the truck a few months ago, i expect it was cheep enough he could not pass it up. But it smokes a lot so he has never used the truck. He is a firewood seller, & thought it would work for him, but it has sat. He knows nothing about the truck.
I hope I don't get any more sarcasm on this Christmas Season. I was totally excited till I read my first reply...

White smoke is not a good sign. Quite often it is a sign of a coolant entering the combustion chamber. Isuzu is very expensive to work on and parts are expensive and mostly captive market. I have a 95 Isuzu with a turbo Diesel that I ran for several years. I bought it from a lender. A guy put a new motor in it and hocked the truck. He was unable to make the pay for it and I bought it for less than the bank had in it. 55 is the absolute max it will go and fuel mileage wasn't anything to brag about. I got tired of driving it about 4 years ago and pull a trailer with a 6L GMC and get almost the same fuel mileage as the Isuzu did. The speed limit is now 75 on IH10 around here and I like to go that fast. I wouldn't go to the trouble of trying to use the components for anything. I thought I had it sold for $500 several times, but no one ever had the cash.

Hi crenwedge:
WOW, thank you for your input. I did go look at the truck. We could not start it, battery to low. The owner knows nothing about the truck. He got it cheep & it has all six new tires & a real nice 14" flat bed. All which he can use. So after looking at it but not able to start it, I left, leaving him with the thought that if the price was right, he could keep the tires/wheels & bed & anything else I would not use. I was thinking If I had a complete chassis with running gear, even if I rebuilt the motor,I might be ahead if I only paid $500 or less. But the truck has over 250,000 miles on it & it may be more than I want to deal with? I also went to look at it because I thought it would be a tilt cab. My project needs a tilt cab setup. I thought this Isuzu would have that to. So no tilt cab & everything will need be rebuilt, I think I'm with you. It may not be worth the trouble. Thanks again for your input...

"I thought it would be a tiltcab"
" I thought this Isuzu would have that to. So no tilt cab"

Really? I'm surprised to know this. I've been around countless Isuzu's and all NPR's have been COE. Could you be mistaken?

Hi 53 moneypit:
We looked all over for a release latch in back on drivers side & it looked like the cab was bolted to a permanent bracket in back left, over the frame. The front almost looked like a tilt hinge behind the bumper, but It was not, I think? The short dog house between the seats comes off exposing the motor. The truck is 1985. I did not see NPR on the side or front,
The owner knows nothing about the truck, but what little he has been around it the last couple months, he still believes it is not tilt cab. The truck is next to a wall, so I could only look on drivers side & front. Wet rainy day, so I did not lay on the ground to look further..
Could the release latch & cab jack be on the passenger side? I didn't see the papers on the truck, but the owner calls in a NPR. For a 1885 I expected it to have A arm suspension, not leaf springs in front. If it were a tilt cab, would the doghouse come off?

My 95 has a release on the driver's side. It has no cab jack. It is spring assist. A 95 looks a lot different and an 85 may not tilt. It may be like the 50's GM cabovers that had a removable dog house. My 95 has leaf springs and disc brakes in front. The 60's and 70's GM low cabovers tilted the same way. Only the GM was almost a 2 man job to tilt. The Isuzu is light enough for one person to tilt. Isuzu parts used to be cheap at a GMC house, but I don't think GMC has parts for them any more. The International Dealer in San Antonio is now an Isuzu dealer and this is one reason I parked mine.

Yea, I saw no reason to think this cab tilted. The dog house did completely remove to reach the complete motor. I don't see enough parts on this truck to make it worth my time.
Thank you all for your in-put. I got pretty excited when I saw this one on Craigslist. I would love to be putting a diesel 4 cylinder in my project though.

Hi Darrell. I looked at your Photobucket and just want to say you've got some nice iron there fellow. Great old Cabovers. I really liked the fender spears on your 48' Chevy Torpedo bodied car. I called a Caddy parts outfit that advertises in HMN to try to buy some for Marianne, my 53' AD but they were adamant that they wouldn't fit the rear fenders of my truck. Frankly I don't think they understood what I wish to do.

Back to the Isuzu: It still looks very much like a tilt cab but certainly wouldn't be the first time I've been wrong if it isn't.
I agree w/ Crenwelge about the price of parts but they have been the best selling import COE for probably 20 years so there are a Bunch of them in wrecking yards. As for power I think they will cruise at about 63-65 MPH all day and sip fuel In my experience. I ran with one for over a hundred miles up the divide and down in Colorado Rockies one day and on cruise control he would fall behind on the grades and then catch up to me on the flats. I know I used more gas in the pickup than he did in the NPR with stake body. I'm sold on them and wouldn't hesitate to own one. But frankly the GM version with the V8 gas is a hotrod. I've driven both version on a race track (Portland, OR) and that V8 jobbie would haul your donkey! around the circuit a lot better than the diesel version. Good Luck whatever you do. Really nice stuff you have.

Darrell: well it seems I am mistaken, i.e., wrong.. about the 85' NPR's. I asked a dealership that I know well and they said the 85's were NON tilt and the engine was behind the cab. Just for the record.

Ha Dave; Well the engine is 1/2 behind the cab. It is still inside also. We had the dog house off. But yea, it is between the seats. Front of the motor is align with the front of the seats.
Thank you for all your concern Dave. I decided there was not much there for me, so I'm going to pass it up. But I sure got excited when I found it was local. I couldn't wait to go see it. But no tilt, that's #1. To many miles on drive train#2. So I am calling around now, I just want a tilt cab setup for now. I'm sure I will still need to build the majority of the sub frame my self. I will have minimum space available with my cab as low to frame as possible. A bit different than most original tilt cabs.

Ha Moneypit; You been working hard on your 53, very nice truck. But you think you have a money pit, let me tell you a story about a good friend's 51 5 window. He just got it on the road first of this year. It was an 8 year project. We counted I believe 12 to15 frames on his property at one time. He had doors lined up, fenders lined up, cabs scattered & the frames, LOL. He was buying $200 & $300 trucks all he could find, just because one had a perfect running board, or a perfect door or something else he needed. He built this truck all in his small garage with no major tools & it is 100% factory specs & no bondo or welds any were. & if factory didn't drill a hole for something, he would not drill a hole for it. With all his accessories, I could not talk him into spot lights because factory didn't have holes for them. It was funny, this truck was ready for show last winter. I mean perfect with all his accessories hanging on it. Except the motor was still on the stand, looking like a new factory correct motor. Not in the truck. that truck has every accessory you could ever imagine GM might put on a truck. He had 6 truck radios restored & lined up on the shelf. I know he had 4 or more swamp coolers before he found the one he was satisfied with. You are wanting the stainless strips along your fenders, he had 6 sets. I was his eBay buyer. He was paying 8, 12, & $1,900 for his sets, plus 1/2 sets & a few nos pieces here & there. But he finely ended up with a perfect set that needed nothing but to be installed. He is not a putter guy I was hot on ebay. By the time he ended up with a perfect 14 piece set for his truck, he had a total of 6 sets, maybe minus a spear or something. There was the only place he drilled holes, in the fenders for those stainless pieces. He wanted them bad. He has accessories under his hood you would not think existed. But he also went a little over board with a few aftermarket chromem stuff also. LOL. I will need to add some photos to my album for you to see, remind me in a couple days if I don't have them on site before then.

Crenwelge- - - - -please check your Private Message folder!
Thanks!
Jerry

stick with the P-30 chassis and get yourself a 350/700R4 combination and a dually rear out of an 80's chevy pickup and it will all come together for you.......no sense in buying something you're gonna have to repair and put money into when you already have the the hard part done (the P-30 chassis).....cutting corners and trying shortcuts, to finish faster only costs more money and time,

Hi hoozat; I think I really like the P30 frame. I just installed a rear-end on it. It's a Ford which I had told my self I would not have, but It was the shortest & newest one I could find & was getting antsy. But I think it may be just what I wanted now? It is a dully rear-end. Full floater with 3.54 gears. I can add disk brakes to this one. Draw back is that I will need Ford wheels when it comes time. For now I already had Chevy steel wheels, 16.5s which are junk, so I didn't mind cutting the centers to fit the ford. This has a wide gear housing, so not much axle tubing inside the frame rails for 4 link brackets. I also had to move the spring pads in to match the GM springs. I kept my main lief mounted up front & cut it off before the rear hanger for now. I need to decide were to mount my airbags & side to side bars & shocks. I will also need to C notch my frame go get it lower. This rear-end has a sway bar mounted to it, but I'm not sure what to do with it either? But the rear-end gears & the width is what I wanted. I just started reading ride-tech literature. There seem to be a few ways to go for rear suspension. I'm in no hurry to finish that setup yet.
Now I would like to set my cab on & start designing a sub frame to tilt the cab . But I'm starting to think I may be jumping the gun & should get a motor in before I screw up & build a dang sub frame in the way of a motor. I will need to have a motor/trans in before I can finish the rear suspension anyways.