Well Gene, if nothing else, your under hood looks more organized and cleaned up than a lot of chassis swaps I've seen. Your issues has me planning ahead to probably locate my battery somewhere other than under the hood when I build my 56 on my 2001 Dak chassis. Is the battery in your 54 remote located or in the box under the cab floor? I ask because I see the pos/neg posts under the RS hood section in your 54. My 56 will likely use a remanned 4.7HO engine which I think is smaller than the 5.2V8 or the 5.7V8 Hemi. On my 2001 Dak the coolant surge tank is built into the radiator shroud with the 4.7V8. Hopefully that will fit under the fenders and hood of the 56 rather than trying to use the 56 radiator. I can modify the original 56 radiator mount frame as needed if the 2001 Dak radiator/surge tank is comparable in size to the original radiator in my 56 which has the Poly V8 in it now. Also, with the 4.7V8 the radiator/surge tank/shroud/thermostat is all located to be accessible under the DS hood section, nothing would be under the center stationary section of the hood.
Also, since I want to use my 56/Dak as a daily driver I plan to locate the battery and fuel tank somewhere back in the chassis to get more weight over the rear axle. Like a fuel tank in the frame behind the rear axle, battery in a frame mounted marine plastic box, with jumper lugs under the hood and a battery tender hookup somewhere between the cab and box on the DS.
Andy, the under hood of my 49 looks more organized then most chassis swaps because I've had more experience dealing with this era Dodge trucks. That translates into "I've messed this up more times the most others have attempted this."
The battery in my 49 is in the left front corner of the bed. The fuel tank is in the factory Dakota location, which puts the gas fill tube right behind the battery box, it that left front corner. I've added a fill door into the bed side. The bed floor on the step side beds sits a couple inches above the frame rails on the Dakota frame between the top of the frame and the bed floor. This means there is not enough space between the bed floor and the frame for a battery. Even the low frame area in front of the frame kick up that is just behind the cab isn't high enough to put a standard height car battery. The outside bed wall is also just a few inches on the outside of the frame, so there is no space between the bed side and the frame to place a battery. That would mean the battery would have to be placed inside the frame rail. On my truck, withy the fuel tank occupying the space inside the frame rail on the driver side of the truck, the battery would have to be on the passenger side. The thought of climbing under the truck to get at the battery wasn't something I was very interested in doing. Giving up a 1" wide x 12" long piece of bed floor space was an easy decision.
The battery on my 54 sat under the top of the fender. That area on these trucks with the wide front fenders is pretty much dead space. The emissions carbon canister sits in that dead space under the right side fender on my 49, but that dead space is unoccupied on the left side. With the battery under the fender, you need to be sure you have the space to pull it out from under the fender should it ever need service. I can tell you that lifting a car battery out from under the fender, and then having to lift it over the fender once the cables have been disconnected is not fun. Enough not fun that the battery in thr bed was much more appealing for this old man.
I'm not so sure the 4.7 has a smaller footprint then a 5.2. It has less cubic inches, but I'm not sold on the idea the outside dimensions are smaller. Those valve covers on a 4.7 are big. The 5.7 has a bigger foot print for sure.
The 49-60 Dodge trucks have a lot of space under the hoods, side to side. The problem is, a large part of that space is under the fenders in areas that do not have easy access. I could probably put a 2" cube in the dead space area under my driver side front fender, but gaining access to what ever is put there is very hard. Everything that is under the hood that you want easy access to hangs along the hood lines on the fenders edge and blocks the access to the area under the fenders. I could put my overflow tank under the front fender, but then I couldn't see it, I couldn't fill it, and I could barely reach it, and that was before all the other stuff got hung in the way.
My 49 has the body channeled over the frame, its something that just happens when you use a Dakota frame, the old frames sat higher then a Dakota frame and the old cabs were taller between the floor that sat on top of the frame, and the bottom of the doors that often extended a few inches below the frame. With my 49 being a 4x4, that just compounds the challenges.
As far as my coolant recovery tank issue, I have decided to order another aluminum recovery tank like the one I have. I was checking the truck over this afternoon. In the past 2 weeks we have put nearly 400 miles on the truck. The coolant level in the radiator cap in the upper hose has the level about a 1/4" below the rubber seal. The current recovery tank has a sight tube on the one side. You can clearly see where the level has been in that tube recently, at just over 1/2 way up. Currently the bottom of the recovery tank has some antifreeze in it, but it does not show up in the sight tube. If I topped off the hose filler, and added enough to show about a 1/2" on the lower part of the sight tube, with the system cold, I think it would only take about a cup of antifreeze, but if I added that much, in a couple weeks I would be right where I am now. .
Last week we had near 80 degrees a coupler days and we drove the truck over 200 miles, so the system got a workout.
I believe if I add the 2nd tank, and use it as an overflow for the 1st tank, I should be able to top off my cooling system and add about an inch to the bottom of recovery tank #1 so I can see it in the sight tube. Then connect the overflow tube to the bottom of tank #2 (leaving it empty) with the coolant dump coming out the top of that tank, I believe I shouldn't loose any coolant, and I should be able to maintain the coolant level in tank #1 within the sight tube. Am I thinking this right?
I'm trying to avoid making a recovery tank. At this point it would have to be made out of steal, not something I really want a coolant recovery tank made out of. Gene
