Thinking GMT400 3500 Dually for Track Day Towing, Thoughts?

[Jimmy D]

A guy has to decide on a budget first, unless money is no object. What are his intentions for it and so on. How did it run before it quit? I think you said the gauge cluster did not work? Did it overheat and shut down? Have good fuel pressure? Oil pressure? Your problem may only be electrical and as simple as a bad ground wire or fuel pump relay. Usually there are ground wires attached to the rear of each head and they could be overlooked in an engine swap.
Salvage yard or reman'd or new crate engine. Price range is wide open. Summit, Jegs and others have a lineup of engines and you can buy a reman'd engine from a local parts store. If a guy is mechanically competent he can save some money by having a shop do the machining and assemble it himself. Looking at the cost of new trucks, and the fact you have a good truck body and frame, I'd be looking to locate a good used engine, provided of course your engine is toast. There is not much of a warranty with salvage yard engines, if any.
I am curious to see if you can make it run again.

 

[the_elegant_fox]

A guy has to decide on a budget first, unless money is no object. What are his intentions for it and so on. How did it run before it quit? I think you said the gauge cluster did not work? Did it overheat and shut down? Have good fuel pressure? Oil pressure? Your problem may only be electrical and as simple as a bad ground wire or fuel pump relay. Usually there are ground wires attached to the rear of each head and they could be overlooked in an engine swap.
Salvage yard or reman'd or new crate engine. Price range is wide open. Summit, Jegs and others have a lineup of engines and you can buy a reman'd engine from a local parts store. If a guy is mechanically competent he can save some money by having a shop do the machining and assemble it himself. Looking at the cost of new trucks, and the fact you have a good truck body and frame, I'd be looking to locate a good used engine, provided of course your engine is toast. There is not much of a warranty with salvage yard engines, if any.
I am curious to see if you can make it run again.

From memory, it idled pretty well and started easily. Under load it would choke and backfire sometimes, I think these are symptoms of an over-rich carb tune. I got about 7 miles from the sellers house when it died while driving once and I got it restarted. The next time it died 1m later, it felt like a flooded engine with crank but no ignition. The truck was low on fuel and running from the bed tank, but it wasn't empty. it may be as simple as fuel getting stuck in a baffle on a hill since I only had enough to get to the station.

I think the first two orders of business I'll have the shop do are

1. Carb tune
2. Add fuel to both tanks and check fuel delivery

I think this block is worth a college try to get it running, especially since I need to get it back home first.

As for the dash, I think this is the lazy way out when swapping a gas engine into a formerly diesel truck. From my research on the forums, you have to splice in each gauge manually so there's some sort of harness work needed.