Building a Monster Mudder

[Morphious]

Hello all, I just bought a beat up old 96 12 valve auto 4x4 extended cab long bed off of craigslist today for 800.00. The whole truck is very rough and the injection pump is completely out of the truck and sitting in rusty pieces in the passenger floorboard and missing pieces, I figure I won't be able to use it as a core for another injection pump, just how life goes sometimes.

Anyway, on to my questions. I'm new to the 12 valve world, I've been driving my 24 valve for the last 10 years and 250k miles, so I'm pretty familiar with the cummins diesel overall and turned alot of wrenches on them.

My goal for this truck I just purchased is to build a diesel mud racing truck, it will be purely an off road vehicle and not driven on the street at all. i will be running 37" to 38" mud tires, but the class I'm going to be running in is class 4, which has truck running 900 hp big block chevies and the like. They are fast and pretty wicked.

Basically I'm starting from scratch on the truck and will be pulling the motor and gutting the interior of the worn out truck, shortening the truck to a shortbed and possibly putting a regular cab truck on it to reduce weight and length even further. I'll have a locker in the front and probably a spool in the back running the 3.55 gears it currently has in 4wd low range. The auto trans is going to be gone through with all new clutches, valve body and torque converter.

Question 1: 47RE, who makes a manual valve body for this transmission? For the races, do you use a converter with a stall? If so how high? The mud racers like my little brothers truck runs a 3500 rpm stall (way to high for a diesel).

Question 2: What are the things I need to look for when tearing down the engine? I'm planning on tearing the top end down to check the cylindars and looking into getting it o-ringed while it's apart. (I know about the KDP and will be doing that to it.)

Question 3: Racing against trucks running 900hp bbc's (naturally aspirated, gas only), what would you think hp wise I'd need to shoot for to compete with them?

Question 4: Engine mods, what are the various go fast mods that can be done to a 12 valve?

What am I looking at parts wise? Injection pump, injectors, injector lines, o rings, cam, turbo, possibly water/meth injection... ?????

Yes, I will have various gauges installed in the cockpit (for you guage nazi's).

Exhaust will be run out the hood, rear ends will be trussed, front links will be replaced with hiem and dom tubing, ladder bars built for the rear, also looking into remote resevoir shocks and other suspension mods. Fuel tank will be removed with a fuel cell in the bed, battery relocated to the back of the truck....

Still in the early planning stages.


Any pointers or help would be appreciated.

Morphious