My secondary project

[HP_Cuda]

Well I've been hinting at it for awhile but I've been looking for quite a long time for a Power Wagon in a certain year set. I finally found one that is in pretty good shape. Usually I find that folks have literally destroyed them trying to jack them up and off-road them to death. This one is a 2 owner vehicle which only has 68k miles on it.

I actually found it up in Cody's neck of the woods and it was kinda a pain to get it down to Calif but it's finally here. When I got it here it barely ran and I have been doing some upgrades.

This is how it looked when I bought it, note the owner kept the wheels as I didn't want them.

[HP_Cuda]

I've wanted a ride which I can use to head over to my buddy's ranch which needs 4WD most times because it's a dirt road for quite awhile. Here is when it showed up.

[HP_Cuda]

More shots of the Truck.

One of my favorite is the jack stored in the engine bay and yes of course it's a 440!

Some notes on the Truck:
Came with a 440!
Front disc and rear drum setup
First year for cruise control - see if you can find it
727 trans
Huge bed
and yep first year for AWD

[HP_Cuda]

Very little rust overall, some surface rust.

[Cuda Cody]

Saw one of those at a local show and it was getting a lot of looks.  They are getting pretty hard to find.  That one looks really nice.

[HP_Cuda]

Two tanks for the Truck: One in the cab which I removed for a couple of reasons and one in the bed.

The bed tank carries over 20G which is nice!

[HP_Cuda]

Thanks Cody!

Here are some more pics

[HP_Cuda]

Here is a raised block shot, now it's painted and looks nice.

Also a crummy carb and old manifold shot.

[HP_Cuda]

So once I got the truck I had to replace the coil (wow it made a huge difference), the plugs, checked the resistance of the wires and they were still good (may just swap them for new ones I already got), replaced the cap and rotor and set the timing. The truck ran okay but the edelbrock carb ran rich and bogged unless under full throttle. I changed out the exhaust to dual exhaust w/ dual inlet/outlet flowmaster mufflers. Has a great tone to it now.

So guess what I replaced the stock manifold with a Torker II manifold and a Holley 750 vacuum secondary carb. I was so happy that the stock air cleaner fit underneath because I took a long time bringing it back via blasting, cleaning, prepping and painting.

I did forget something after it was all together but I knew how to fix that by pulling the distributor. Now it runs like a freakin champ!

[HP_Cuda]

I also found someone to reupholster the seats as they really needed it. Unfortunately it took longer than it should but he did a really good job. The center piece folds down or you can pull it up and have storage underneath it as well. Kinda cool.

[Cuda Cody]

I dig the original orange color.   

[1 Wild R/T]

75, smog exempt.. Excellent.... Did it have A/C?  I don't see any, but the compressor bracket was there...

[HP_Cuda]

Yep, was looking for 72-75 year PW's

No A/C but no worries, it's a fun truck I don't plan on running much in the heat. But ironically enough I've taken some long trips and the 4.11 rear end gears put the truck at 3k on the freeway at 65mph. All this and I cannot budge the temp - it stays pretty cool.

The other thing that helps is the stock trans cooler sitting in front of the rad.

[RUNCHARGER]

Nice looking truck. I love those year trucks, this is the last one I owned, also a factory 440 truck.

[Moparman82]

Sweet ride Bryan! I love those trucks, very cool project