My dad has a 98 Durango 1st model year (1998) hunter green w/ the suede inlay seats pakage (SLE) 4x4. It's got the 5.9 motor w/ 150k on it & the trans nothing has ever been rebuilt on it. No parts have been fixed except the brakes/ tires/ shocks, oil change typical maintenance etc. & one intake manifold recently. Needless to say the truck is nearly finished. The transmission sticks between gears a long time and OD occasionally malfunctions. The rear rack & pinion occasionally feel like its starting to slip & the tires are all past due for a change. I expect the trans to go anytime soon. It occasionally delays 1-3 seconds before a heavy thud allows it into reverse bc it is starting to sip out of gear. I'll bet I can make until the end of this year w/ the trans how it is, but after that I think it is disassemble / rebuild time for a lot of pieces on the truck.
I would like to save this truck with my dad but I think the 5.9 is kind of obsolete in the near future & we don't have a garage + we use the truck quite a bit in snow. I showed him Durangos on youtube with cummins engines and he thinks its nice, but we're not sure how affordable it would be to rebuild the truck as a diesel - or hopefully even a turbo diesel would be nice but this is more of a fuel mileage thing so trying to spend as little $$$ on this as possible. We are assuming the rear-end will need rebuilt & maybe even a higher rack/pinion & stall to take full advantage of the low end torque a cummins would offer. I don't even know where to start bc so many questions: What kind of trans would I need? Can the cummins engine even fit w/ the 4wd combination or only in 2wd? Should I convert to a stickshift/ would I have to?
These are the type of questions this forum comes so much in handy with. I can take pic of the Durango soon + add it into the thread, but I'll wait to see how many response on this topic. I'm not dead set on doing this immediately, but it's something that I would like to consider doing by end of the year if the build cost would come in below $3,500. If not, I suppose I will have to just find the trans at Paul's or a dif yard and transplant it just like anyone else. It just seems so boring to put back in the same 5.9 engine everyone else has and continue to have such bad gas mileage when the possibility of converting to a more efficient platform seems possible. Please if you're a chrysler guy let me know what you think and opinions I don't speak chrysler and I would really like to help my dad save this truck bc he likes it a lot and so do I, but if the cummins conversion isn't possible for less than 5 grand we are not going to do it and probably just plan to get a newer truck eventually.
I would like to save this truck with my dad but I think the 5.9 is kind of obsolete in the near future & we don't have a garage + we use the truck quite a bit in snow. I showed him Durangos on youtube with cummins engines and he thinks its nice, but we're not sure how affordable it would be to rebuild the truck as a diesel - or hopefully even a turbo diesel would be nice but this is more of a fuel mileage thing so trying to spend as little $$$ on this as possible. We are assuming the rear-end will need rebuilt & maybe even a higher rack/pinion & stall to take full advantage of the low end torque a cummins would offer. I don't even know where to start bc so many questions: What kind of trans would I need? Can the cummins engine even fit w/ the 4wd combination or only in 2wd? Should I convert to a stickshift/ would I have to?
These are the type of questions this forum comes so much in handy with. I can take pic of the Durango soon + add it into the thread, but I'll wait to see how many response on this topic. I'm not dead set on doing this immediately, but it's something that I would like to consider doing by end of the year if the build cost would come in below $3,500. If not, I suppose I will have to just find the trans at Paul's or a dif yard and transplant it just like anyone else. It just seems so boring to put back in the same 5.9 engine everyone else has and continue to have such bad gas mileage when the possibility of converting to a more efficient platform seems possible. Please if you're a chrysler guy let me know what you think and opinions I don't speak chrysler and I would really like to help my dad save this truck bc he likes it a lot and so do I, but if the cummins conversion isn't possible for less than 5 grand we are not going to do it and probably just plan to get a newer truck eventually.
