Found this truck in north Arkansas this past October. Eight hours one way for me. Failed Cummins swap so only the NP435 was there. 47,000 mile mitilary truck. Dana 60 rear and Dana 70 front. 4.10's. Factory PTO winch.
Dropped in a 2001 5.9 Magnum. Used a 95 Ram OBD 1 wiring harness from front to back. Just had to swap light plugs and used the 95 throttle body. Used the 95 steering column and dash too.
Tuff Country 4 inch all spring lift with 35"s.
I'll post more later. Let's see if I can get a picture up.

awesome truck, looks great

The 360 fit really nice. Used the 360's manifolds with a y pipe I found on Jeg's or Summit.Running single 2.5 inch pipe with a big Magnaflow round muffler. I had to notch the bellhousing for the crank position sensor but overall not a bad swap. The engine has plenty of power. In first or reverse I can let out the ctutch and the truck moves with no throttle. It really needs another gear so I am going down the NV4500 rabbit hole. The 205 transfer case in this truck is divorced so I will be using a 2wd Chevy NV4500. It has a short tailshaft. Going to have to modify the tranny mount and do a little driveshaft work but shouldn't be too bad. I have the tranny and a gas bellhousing and hydraulic pedals are on the way.Here's some before pics.

I like the Chevy trans idea, pretty sure Chevy avoided Dodge's 5th gear problems by not using a slip joint?

Robert

Well that didn't work to well???
I put two aftermarket front fenders on and had two patch panels put in over the bed wheel openings. I painted it with a 4" foam roller. Still lots of dents but I wanted this one to be functional, not pretty. My motto on this build was "don't let perfection get in the way of good enough"

The front axle is a closed knuckle Dana 70 which everyone says to run from. I looked around for a 60 with disc brakes but found nothing within driving distance and everything else was $1000 plus shipping. Since this truck had such low miles I pulled the cover on the 70. The gears had no wear. I found the goofy ball seals, cleaned everything, repacked bearing etc. The thing has massive 12x3 inch brake shoes front and rear and actually stops well? I have a booster/master combo ordered from Summit as this one looks original. Everone is backordered but Summit says this will ship from the manufacturer eventually. IF afront Dana falls in my lap really cheap I'll swap but for now I'm good.

From what I read on the net Chevy had no issues. I think that maybe the 5th gear nut issue was caused by the Cummins harmonics which caused the nut to back off. One sharp guy asked why didn't they simply put reverse threads on the shaft which would cause the nut to tighten?

Some years ago I watched a youtube, guy had a new 2001, 2500, 360 gas engine, NV4500 with 75 miles on it, fifth gear fell off. He wanted a new transmission under warranty, dealer refused only offering a rebuilt. He bought a new NV4500 and installed it over a mother's day weekend. I looked for this video again a few years ago but couldn't find it again. I think the gas engines had less issues but still had problems.

Robert

Another good thing about the divorced setup is the tranny is simple to pull. You can even take the tailhousing off without pulling the tranny.

Here's a pic of these massive locking hubs on the 70. No one has parts so I'm looking for a spare.

the chev/ygas dodge/diesel dodge NV4500 is the same transmission----the only difference is the front input shaft----the early chevys had a deeper first gear so the input had to match that gear---the later chevys used the same tooth count as the dodge ones------the diesel harmonics are to blame----the dodge gas failure was probably due to the clown that assembled it......

I think the length of the input was different too. I haven't ordered the Dodge input yet. My bellhousing showed up a few minutes ago. I was going to try and find an old Lakewood smallblock bell and machine it to fit the NV4500 bearing retainer to keep my newly gone thru mechanical linkage which works great. The problem is that the length of the NP435 and NV4500 inputs are different by about .75 inches. I pulled the entire hydraulic slave cylinder assembly with all of the lines from the 95 1500 I removed the wiring harness from. It had an NV3500 in it. I will use it to mock up with. Should work.

yes--the input lengths are different------if you have the early chev you cannot fit the dodge inputs because the gears dont match up-------to change the early chevy you have to totally disassemble the gear case to get to the gear the input touches----if its the later you can change the inputs by taking out the 4 bolts on the bearing retainer (throwout bearing) then just pull the input out---there are pictures of it on the internet....

This is a 97 model which from what I've found is not the early model so it should (Ihope) be an easy swap.