This truck came to us from the desert south west-- in amazing condition. Customer supplied us with an Cummins ISB 3.9 and Allison transmission. This was our first venture into the smaller ISB power plants.
The owner wanted to keep this truck as original looking as possible. Fortunately, the ISB fit easily under the hood.
Once the fab work was done, the wiring and tuning could begin. The engine has a re-flashed ECM to the later stock 210hp. Engine to trans is the stock adapter package, with a trans controller and wiring from Custom Transmission controls in Florida.
This engine is fly-by-wire, the only tell-tale that the engine is all electronic is the throttle pedal.
In order to keep the lines and look as original as possible, we opted to use an air-to-water charge cooler that could be hidden under the hood instead of a larger more visible intercooler right behind the grill. The only thing visible is the small radiator for the charge cooler.
The results were pretty awesome.
That appears to be a great conversion. That engine really looks like it belongs there. My dad had a '66 Ford F100 2 dr.. Do you have any feedback on performance of that particular engine/transmission combination since the transplant? Just wondering what the 0-60 times are, fuel mileage, etc. Thx, Ed
It was ok. The issue was the used engine. it ran, but it wasn't great. The engine clearly needed to be gone through. that project is why we won't use unknown used engines any longer.
Having said that though, Shiver Diesel (well, Mike Free, formerly of Shiver) uses those engines a lot, and actually gave me a tune for the other one here. Personally, i'd love to do another project with the 3.9 ISB version. I think there's great potential there. I've tried to get driveability info and mileage info from the current owner of that truck, but I have never heard back.
I'm working on drawings for a Florida customer that wants to use the ISB with an NV4500.
