I made two very good buys this past week towards getting my driveline needs for my 56 C3 pickup going onto my 2001 Dakota donor chassis. My Dak has the 4.7V8/5-spd, which at first I had planned to install a remanned 4.7HO into the chassis, mostly to use all the engine accessories from the older 4.7. The long block from Powertrains would have been $3999, onto which I'd still have to do the HO intake, limited exhaust options, etc. I could easily have exceeded $5000 just for the engine, and have limited transmissions options. Gene, a great resource on this forum steered me right, and I switched gears to find a 5.2 Magnum to build up. That also gave me the option to use a modern 8-speed automatic.

This past week I nailed two good deals. Last Saturday I bought a 5.2 Magnum that was a newer crate engine installed into a Ram. The Ram was recently wrecked, and I got the complete engine, only 25,000 miles on it, running, for $600. The engine had been installed in the Ram about ten years back by the local Dodge dealer. I do need to find a harness and ECM for it. Then this week I was in Toledo for work and I have a habit of checking FBM when I drive distances for work. Found and bought a 2016 ZF 8HP-70 8-speed trans with the torque converter and hoses/tubes, and the drivesahft for $400. Seller said the trans had about 50,000 miles on it. The 8HP-70 bolts up directly to the Hemi/5.2/318/5.9/360/340 blocks, and an aftermarket harness/controller makes it a plug and play runner.
The harness and controller are not cheap, around $2000, but the results I have read are very worth it.

Feeling pretty good about being at $1000 for a working driveline, up to around $3500 by the time I get the harness/controller worked out, when at 1st I had figured $5000+ to get this far. Thanks Gene for steering me into the better choice for my 56 pickup build

Yeah, that's a big step forward with your project. Congrats on the good finds! Looking forward to following your threads as this project continues.

Kinda spendy but HotWireAuto makes harnesses for the Magnum engines........

https://www.hotwireauto.com/chrysler-harnesses#1851119426

Yup, Hotwire is a likely source for my eventual harness needs. A bit pricey, but the scores I made this week makes a budget easier for the wiring essentials. At some point ya gotta spend money to make it all work right. My truck has to be as reliable, or better, than a brand new truck (for a LOT less money).

5.2L/5.9L Dodge Magnum Automatic
5.2L/5.9L Dodge Magnum Manual
This is for a manual or 46RE not a ZF8! You can get a manual pcm and harness out of a junker. You probably will have to control the engine and trans separately. You can get the ZF8 controller here.

i used hotwire years ago for a late model chevy engine in a 55 chevy my budy was building at the time. it was the first time either of us had any experience installing a newer fuel injection engine in anything.
those guys were fantastic to work with, and took my many phone calls to help me understand what we were trying to accomplish, as well as helping me to understand the wiring necessary to this process being a successful endeavor.
although the harness was somewhat expensive, in the end it was well worth the cost !

Big difference between Cheby and Dodge, Everything is available for Chebys.

I have an 80 volare that I'm slowly working on, original/6 car. I have a V8 k-frame, original plans were to basically transplant a 318 magnum with a 5 speed drivetrain straight out of a Dakota, wiring and all, with said wiring harness untaped and anything I don't absolutely need to make it run ripped out and thrown in File 13.
But after having done a magnum head conversion, a stock 360-2 bbl LA replacement cam, a 4 bbl and header/true duals exhaust on an otherwise untouched 83 318 short block in my D250, I started to really rethink the EFI idea.
Somewhere in attic I have a complete engine compartment wiring harness and computer from a 92 or 93 dakota that I specifically bought for this project years ago ... I'm still going with a magnum block based 318 (because I have a couple of them here!) But I'm on the fence between carb and EFI.
To me carb = K I S S principle. I know I can make a carb run how I want it to run.
I'm not building a race car but a decent cruiser. I don't need 10 secs, 4.some gears, and single digit mpg. So I'm wanting to wake it up a bit over how a stock 318 car would run but don't want to have to 2 foot it because of a radical cam....

If you are planning on ordering a harness from Hot wire, it might be worth asking them about incorporating the trans harness into the engine harness. Those guys were great to work with several years back when I worked with them on a 5.9 Magnum motor for my son's 57 Dodge wagon and then a couple years later when he upgraded the 57 Dodge wagon to the 5.7 Hemi with the Hot Wire harness.

volaredon, I've put over 100K trouble free miles on a 90/91 Dakota harness with a throttle body EFI V6 in my old Plymouth coupe, and over 10,000 trouble free miles on a 96 Dakota port injection harness set up on my 49 Dodge truck, plus a huge load of trouble free miles on actual Dakota harnesses in Dakota trucks (4 trucks) with only having encountered that bad factory wire splice under the battery. I've played with Mopar EFI for years with very few problems, but you are not me.

The reality is, if you expect to have problems with what every ignition or fuel delivery system you use, I guarantee your going to meet your expectations. You get what ever you expect, because that is what you look for. The time frame, or miles that happened before the event doesn't matter until you get what you expected, because that was all you look for.

The modern EFI systems (if you want to call a 30 year old system "modern") are often installed as a unit then completely ignored until something goes wrong 60,000 miles later, and then the system gets the blame for the user not giving it any attention.
A guy puts a carb and point ignition system on his ride and every 2 years he rebuilds the carb, and every year he installs new points and condenser, a new cap, and rotor, and probably plug wires but calls it trouble free if it makes it 60,000 miles.

Yeah I've had several 87-96 Dakotas as daily drivers, and would like to find another/ actually I know of a 93 with very low miles, super clean body but it's a 2wd 3.9 and the owner wants what I consider too much for it, especially when he thinks there's a trans problem. Ideally I'd like another 318/4wd version like the one I have now..... but that's another story.

For something more on track with the thread, years ago at another job the owners tossed a catalog for (then) new aftermarket replacement gas tanks, axle shafts (both fwd and rwd, it did list 8-1/4 axles) and more.
I got to looking at it and looking at a gas tank for a 91-95 caravan I noticed it had same length width and capacity as the tank in my F body. A 91-95 caravan is already EFI. Not long after I looked at that book, a good friend of mine gutted and scrapped one of those vans. I was able to get the tank out of it. I haven't looked at it in a while, but I did when I got it, and it appears that all is have to do would be to move the filler nipple to the same spot as it is on my volare tank and I think it will be a bolt in. And at one time you could get "just the pump" without buying the whole pump assembly for them and "just the pump" is the same between those year caravans and a Dakota. So it appears I have a bolt in tank already here, if I decide to go with my original plan of a whole Dakota power train, as it would be used in the Dakota. I wonder if there are other "close fit" options for people wanting to do an EFI swap into a carbureted body.....

My son and I shortened an 04 (or 05) Hemi Durango 4x4 chassis to put under a 90s Ramcharger. He used the fuel tank out of an 04 -06 Caravan because the Durango tank would no fit (I wasn't there so I don't know what that issue was). The newer mini van tanks has an odd shape because it sits midbody on the van, but the van fuel pump works. He still can't get the gauge to work well, and the fuel fill tube in the van is in a poor location for the Ramcharger fill door. I wouldn't say it was a good fit, but the Ramcharger does go down the road.

For the record, I'm not doing another 04 or newer Dakota/ Durango frame swap. The newer frames do not have the straight, level, frame side rails. Those rails are curved front to back, and change elevation as the move rearward.