I play drums in a band (look at my gas pedal!) and was looking for an American pushrod V8 project to play around with that also would fit my drums. Randomly, this 1996 Dodge B2500 van showed up on Craigslist (who uses Craigslist anymore?) for $1000.00 because the guy needed to skip town and he couldn’t get it running. It was a Florida vehicle, so it was rust free, and he set it up as a mini camper with a cool green interior and wood floors with a bed in the back, solar panels on the roof, etc.
They drove it up to Columbus, Ohio, had a breakdown, and had to sell it before leaving town for Texas, so I went and grabbed it with a trailer and brought it up to Cleveland. I found the issue was just a fuel pump relay, but it was a gutless 3.9 V6 that burned a lot of oil. I found a guy selling a second gen Ram frame with the 5.2 V8 and overdrive transmission on it for 600 bucks, because he wanted the body for his Cummins project. I and figured I’d swap the V8 and transmission into this van.
Many headaches later, I figured out that V8 Dodge van parts are hard to find, and they aren’t modified by many people, so info was scarce. I was happy to find that this motor I bought was a freshly rebuilt .040 over Magnum that was built by Marshall Engines (Blueprint Engines) back in 2011 and NEVER RAN since then! The transmission was freshly gone through as well.
I tore the engine apart to inspect it and found it still had fresh oil in it and paint marks on the faces of the valves. I decided to warm it over with some flat-top hypereutectic pistons, a double roller timing chain, a Hughes 523/533 lift cam that’s 208/214 duration at .050”, and the matching springs, retainers, and pushrods to make it work. The heads are factory iron Magnum units ported out using an old set of Mopar Performance grinding templates, and it’s all topped off with a Hughes EFI airgap intake with a ported factory throttle body on top.
After figuring out the weird quirks with Mopar van engine mounting setups, I got the engine in there and built a custom dual exhaust starting with early ‘92/’93 high flow Magnum manifolds with a balance tube and BBK tunable stainless mufflers exiting out in front of the rear tires. The hardest part was getting a 1998 truck engine harness and computer torn apart and combined with a V6 van harness and making the 46RE overdrive transmission function. I had to add a relay and a fuse to the factory under hood fuse box and connect it all to the transmission.
I’ve fabbed up a steering column/clock spring setup to allow a Grant “tuff wheel” style wheel to be mounted and still have the horn button and turn signal cancel operate. The horn itself is a very beepy Hella setup that almost sounds like an old roadrunner. Future plans are to replace the 8.25” open rear with a 9.25” sure grip I have, swap the gears to 4.11, and build a suspension that gets the van a bit lower and handles better. Nobody makes parts for these and if you google “Dajiban” you will find guys in Japan modifying these dodge vans and racing them. Most of them have totally custom brake and suspension mods.
I still need to get someone to build a proper tune for this setup, but it runs great as is and has a great sound out of the side pipes.
