I'm off to work this morning but when I get home this afternoon, there will be a lovely THIRD Dodge Durango with a Hemi engine in the drive. I had been working on this deal for a week or so.
As some of you know, the wife and I drive these things:
They are a full frame, 4x4 or AWD rather, with a 4 LO and a 4 Lock setting on the transfer case. They are powered by this:
In theory, I could take the body off of this truck- (I call it a truck, but it's classified as an SUV) and put the body of something else on top of it, creating a 4x4 monster. The new garage isn't big enough for something like that though. Maybe some other time. The reason I bought it was because of my number 1 rule. It was cheap.
I bought it for the parts. There are lots of good parts on this donor truck. It's black, just like mine and has the same interior as hers. Mostly, I bought it for the engine, dash cluster, ECU, drive by wire pedal and all the sensors. I have ordered a shop manual for the truck and that will be here in a couple days.
There is a fair amount of support for these engines here and the base, factory equipped power ratings start with these numbers:
It produces 345 horsepower (5,600 rpm) and 375 lb-ft of torque (4,400 rpm) from 5.7 liters
There are headers, intakes, all sorts of goodies to make more grunt. I will get some pics when I get home, it was dark last night when I bought it. It is a complete, running Hemi donor vehicle. The only issue is, the engine has a bottom end noise. I haven't started it yet, I'll do that today. I'll be pulling the engine and sticking it on a stand to take it apart and see what has happened inside the engine. They started it one morning and it made a terrible knocking sound, they shut it off and that's where it sat until I bought it last night. I couldn't pass it up.
Expect many picture filled posts and let's enjoy a Hemi V8 build while we try to come up with something to stick it in!