Another magnum swap thread

Well, thought I would have some good info to share, but it went downhill after further study.

It appears that the CCD bus needs the body module in order to function, because it powers the circuit. But other than the CTM and the PCM, nothing else is needed to make the CCD bus function.

Also, the ABS module can be used to feed the PCM a speed input. Found a guy on here that said he swapped out the rear axle in his Dakota and lost the ABS sensor, so he used a universal speedometer converter from Dakota Digital (maybe this one? Universal Speedometer Signal Interface) to feed the output shaft sensor info to the ABS module and it ran without issues. This means a simple sensor in the speedometer hole of a 727/904/A833 could give a signal to the PCM without a bunch of work or cost (Dakota Digital converter was less than $100).

So, in theory, if someone were to wire in a CTM and CAB (ABS module) with a converter from Dakota Digital, all of the pertinent info for gauges would be present on the CCD data bus. This would save the need to run additional sending units on the motor. And it would save a fair number of wires, too.

The issue I ran into is that the ‘01 CCD data bus doesn’t appear to be a standard protocol, and I have been unable to find a controller that would convert the signals into something that aftermarket gauges could run on. SpeedHut has a line of CANbus gauges that would be similar to what I would want to see, but they don’t work on the CCD bus architecture. I know the OEM cluster runs on the CCD bus, so it isn’t out of the question to use a Ram cluster, but it might not be the cleanest fix.

I did find a thread where a guy built an interface to convert aftermarket CANbus signals to CCD so he could run his factory instrument cluster. We would need one that went the other way, and if so might be able to run something like the SpeedHut gauges. No idea what that would take, but it doesn’t seem impossible.

Speedhut gauges -About Our Freedom CAN-BUS Gauges

On a side note, the converter/CAB fix means that I can run the OEM cruise control sometime down the road.