Fuel Tank, Rear Drive Line, and 4" Exhaust

Well, ladies and gentleman, after more than a year I am back at it. I have done little to nothing on this old crew for a long time. A couple of days ago, after packing the wife, full-sized son, and 80 pound lab in the standard cab of my '91 Cummins truck to pull the fifth wheel on a camping trip, I dug through the pile of carp (yes, that is how I spell it) in my shop and found the old crew cab project.

To locate the large diesel tank, I had to move the carrier bearing cross member (bottom of picture below) forward a few inches. I had installed the other cross member (top of picture) at another time and it is recorded in another post. I plan to have two tanks. The rear of the frame is already set-up to install a ramcharger tank. I know I will run into some issues with this front tank and the bottom of the cab. Once I try to fit the cab, I will decide if I will modify the cab or use a short body lift. If I need the body lift to clear the tranny, that will be the plan. If the cab clears the tranny, then I will fab on the cab.

The little cross piece with the tape measure on it was a piece that was just behind the cab original truck. Here I am using it to both carry the front tank strap and to eventually hang the front of the muffler.

In this picture, you can see what I have set-up for the fuel tank strap. Years ago, I had put a smaller gas tank in this location. This tank is much bigger, but the turn down in the crew cab frame made the factory Dodge Cummins tank strap too long. I am not completely happy with the way this turned out with the old gasser tank strap, but it will do for now.

You can see the fuel lines that I borrowed from a one of my standard cab donor trucks. They are several inches too short to reach the sending unit on this tank, but that is not an issue due to the fact that I will be installing tank switching valves in the floor of the cab under the edge of the driver's seat.

You can also see the hump on top of the tank that will most likely interfere with the cab.

This pic below shows the two pieces of the rear drive line. The front section on the right is attached to the 205 transfer case. The rear section on the left is attached to the Dana 70 rear end. It looks like I will be taking about 2 inches out of the overall length. You can also see where the carrier bearing is in relation to the the relocated cross member. If I take the 2 inches out of the frond section, the bearing will line up with the cross member nicely.

In this shot of the front end of the fuel tank and the driver's side of the cross-member you can see from the location of the holes in the frame rail how far I shoved the member forward. I have not drilled new holes to mount this yet. I have not decided if it is going in like this as it was in the crew cab originally, or if I will flip it over and hang the drive shaft bearing from it. The drive shaft I am using came out of a 1992-3 Dodge Club-cab diesel dually with an automatic. On that truck, the bearing hung from the member.

I also laid the Stan's 4 inch exhaust in the frame. I bought this a couple of years ago, and, since Stan' does not offer a system for a crew, I ordered one for a Club-cab since they have the same wheel base. This is the first I have known how well it will fit. I laid the down-pipe and the wiggly-pipe in before to see how they cleared the tranny and t-case, but I was happy to see that the whole system fits very well. The over-the-axle and tail pipes even look like they will miss the rear tank.

You can see that by flipping the aforementioned cross-member it will go over rather than under the exhaust allowing the use of a hanger there and eliminating the potential rattle source.

This last shot just shows how close the big 4 inch pipe is to all the junk it has to clear along the passenger side of these old Dodge 4x4s.