1974 Dodge Dart Diesel

I have another diesel swap story. For years I had full sized vans, really liked them but the mileage sucked. In the 80s when GM was putting the Olds 350 diesel in big cars they would get mid to high 20s for mileage, it started me thinking about swapping some kind of diesel into my van.

In 89 when Dodge started using the Cummins engine it really started me thinking. An inline engine would fit in the van a lot easier than a V-8 would. So in 92 I went out and found an 89 engine at a junkyard, bought it and proceeded to stuff it into my 75 Dodge B300. It took me about 6 months and wasn't easy. But it was worth it, the performance exceeded my expectations. The van with a 360 and 4:10s ALWAYS got 9-11 mpg, no matter what the load was or how you drove it. With the diesel it always got at least 15 mpg, usually higher. On the road it would get low 20s at 70 mph. In Sept. of 93 I towed a car to the Bonneville salt flats to race. The ease in which we went over the Rockies made all the work worth it. When we were crossing Neb. we were getting 17 mpg at 70 mph, moving about 13,000 lbs. But after 24 hours on the road I wasn't real alert and managed to pump 20 gallons of gas into the van. The pump had diesel on one side and gas on the other. I just saw diesel when we rolled past the pump and I did not pay attention. I saw what I did when I was finishing up and saw that it said premium right above the numbers spinning over. So I had to siphon all the gas out and refill with diesel.

People are swapping Cummins 4bt engines into all different kinds of vehicles, go to 4bt swaps.com and check it out. Hope you're able to enjoy that Dart for along time yet, I like it, pretty cool!