1988 s1853 dt 360 hauler build and upgrades

[Booyah45828]

With good batteries, cables, and starter, it should start at 34 no problem.

If you plan on starting it much colder then that, make sure you put fuel additive in the tank for antigel/antiwax. We use the power service white bottle in the shop, but any name brand one should work as long as you follow the instructions on it. The fuel additive is one of those things were you might not need it, but it's better to have it and not need it, then to need it and not have it.

[rwd4evr]

Ugh. Had most of the story of getting Fiona the bus home and my phone died. No auto save apparently. Crap. It was an adventure, no time to rewrite right now.

[rwd4evr]

Okay, let me try this again. So I loaded one of my spares in the back of my mountaineer me and my dad were off 2 + hours to Bangor Pennsylvania from Wilmington Delaware. I brought all of my hand tools for the most part but I did not bring my what I call my
"oh ****!" box with tons of random little Parts like brake lines, ferrules and hose clamps random hoses and all kinds of stuff that I bring to drift events for when I break some weird ****. So we got there and it was like 30 8 degrees at 3:00. Give the bus quick look around we started it fired right up. I started checking it over a little bit and the guy says how the brakes feel kind of squishy. I get in to check it out and the pedal drops that do the floor and I hear hissing. And my heart drops then I immediately go into what do I need to do now mode. Find brake fluid spewing out and the yard owner says go pull it outside of the yard because he's not going to be there that late. Luckily there is a nice flat mostly dry spot to park the bus on. go get compression fittings and a big piece of quarter inch brake line and come back fix one oh, still spewing out of the other one fix that, start bleeding start getting good pedal and poof blow out the little three in long line from the t on the axle to the driver rear caliper. Back to a different part store after inspection of all the brake lines since the close one is closed now, and buy a short line and a long one to possibly replace the passenger front Hardline from the frame up to above the axle to the hose. It's fitting is so jacked up (front one)I didn't think I could get the fitting out of the hose possibly so I decided to leave it alone. Replace the little line bleed all the brakes again, over and over again it seems. Finally had a good pedal at like 9:00-10:00 probably if not later. I have to thank the owner for sticking it out with me the whole time and helping while I worked and bleeding, plus actually paying for the brake line parts and gallon and a half of brake fluid we went through.
So off I went with my dad following. Didn't want to hit the highway right off the bat so took a bunch of back twisty roads through the mountains kinda, getting used to this big girl was pretty easy. the weird shift pattern threw me off a few times. everything is pretty good for a while decided to stop and look it over and found the master cylinder was leaking between it and the hydroboost unit. There was only leaking when you are pushing the pedal so just decided to go for it use the brakes as little as possible stop occasionally to make sure the master was still full enough.
There's a little card that I guess the previous owner / drivers I had put in it that said 2700 was flat-out and that left me at 55 miles an hour. I got too close to 60 a couple times when I was not really paying attention but stayed at 55, 56 most of the time. To top of the fiasco we stopped for dinner close to home and my dad couldnt find his wallet. Found it the next day outside the tow yard and he had to go back and get it.
So I named her "Fiona" I kept thinking what a fiasco, had my dad sitting there for like 6 hours. Im pretty sleep deprived and deleriuos at this point. I had the song "fee" by Phish stuck in my head now and I keep thinking I can't believe "I own a bus".
Fee-owna. Now the fun begins!

[rwd4evr]

Is my engine a DtA360 if I have an" aftercooler" ? Are they the same besides the intercooler/aftercooler whatever you want to call it? Mine is vertical, driver side of the cowl. It actually looks like the radiator is really only half core as well, with the tank extending over the top of the intercooler. Very odd design, for more capacity I guess?
It's a 1988 s1800 Wayne body. Built 2/88 I think off the top of my head. The vin is 1HVLPCFP5JH589851. I thought I got a service manual from someone but I'll be damned If I can find the file in my phone.

[ermracing]

Glad you made it home with your new bus! You don't drift that Mercedes in the first picture, do you?

[cadillackid]

yep navistar split rad.. the CAC sits inside the frame of the radiator.. they were made in 2 and 3 core.. as far as ive seen most all the 360s are the same.. some of the later ones i understand got the MW pump instead of the common 'A' pump. with a properly working and djusted fan clutch my 360 Never runs hot or even thinks about it.. this summer was a good test.. i drove it from ohio to Key west.. I hit the mountains when it was in the low-mid 90s.. it was 100 in florida .. I had the Air-conditioning maxxed and I still never saw 200.. thats with an MT643.. when I had the AT545 my engine fan would roar most all the time and it would hang around 200-205 in 100 degree heat..



-Christopher

[Booyah45828]

Originally Posted by cadillackid

yep navistar split rad.. the CAC sits inside the frame of the radiator.. they were made in 2 and 3 core.. as far as ive seen most all the 360s are the same.. some of the later ones i understand got the MW pump instead of the common 'A' pump. with a properly working and djusted fan clutch my 360 Never runs hot or even thinks about it.. this summer was a good test.. i drove it from ohio to Key west.. I hit the mountains when it was in the low-mid 90s.. it was 100 in florida .. I had the Air-conditioning maxxed and I still never saw 200.. thats with an MT643.. when I had the AT545 my engine fan would roar most all the time and it would hang around 200-205 in 100 degree heat..



-Christopher

I thought you upgraded that to the full width radiator and intercooler? If you didn't I at least thought you were the guy with the info about that upgrade.

Navistar put out a lot of those half and half jobs. They seem to work okay, but I know I'd feel more comfortable with a full width radiator if I had one.

[EastCoastCB]

If you have a standard IC bus with a split rad the stuff from a later bus with the full rad and CAC are available. My non-egr 2003 had a rull rad. It was a CE300.

[cadillackid]

Originally Posted by Booyah45828

I thought you upgraded that to the full width radiator and intercooler? If you didn't I at least thought you were the guy with the info about that upgrade.

Navistar put out a lot of those half and half jobs. They seem to work okay, but I know I'd feel more comfortable with a full width radiator if I had one.

I got the info for it as i weas going to do it on my 444E, but after my trans upgrade to the ally 1000 and the fan update to the 9 blade fan and electric Clutch ive never had a single worry about the temp on that bus since.. I occasionally see 210 on the 444E which is well within its safe zone.. and the fan never runs full time for very long.. my DTA360 bus ive never felt the need to upgrade.. esp now with the MT643 it runs really cool...


-Christopher

[rwd4evr]

Originally Posted by ermracing

Glad you made it home with your new bus! You don't drift that Mercedes in the first picture, do you?

Not that one but another SLC. That silver one is a 280slc my drift car is a 450SLC.

[rwd4evr]

Originally Posted by cadillackid

yep navistar split rad.. the CAC sits inside the frame of the radiator.. they were made in 2 and 3 core.. as far as ive seen most all the 360s are the same.. some of the later ones i understand got the MW pump instead of the common 'A' pump. with a properly working and djusted fan clutch my 360 Never runs hot or even thinks about it.. this summer was a good test.. i drove it from ohio to Key west.. I hit the mountains when it was in the low-mid 90s.. it was 100 in florida .. I had the Air-conditioning maxxed and I still never saw 200.. thats with an MT643.. when I had the AT545 my engine fan would roar most all the time and it would hang around 200-205 in 100 degree heat..



-Christopher

That's so odd. So does that make this a DTA360? What is CAC?, compressed air cooler? I'm going to have to identify my pump, this thing definitely needs some more power. I was down to 48 mph on a hill that I don't think was really too bad. That is with 5.37 gears(I checked last night finally). I don't know that it's running at full power at this point though either. No boost gauge, old fuel, I found some fraying on the red rubber charge pipe coupler but it doesn't seem to be a through rip. Haven't checked while running yet. I found some info on turni g up the me pump but I didn't see any a pump stuff yet. How can I identify it?

[rwd4evr]

So I've been searching for rear end gears and in my travels have been looking at the idea of a trans swap as well/instead. I just found an Eaton fuller road ranger 9 speed
RTX14609B. So it's an overdrive (.73) and will handle 1450lb ft of torque. That puts me at 3.92 final drive. I've reached out to a couple company to see if this is possible it not. Here's specs on the trans too. Anyone know much about these type of swap things? He said I can have the clutch too. Is it just a matter of having the right sae bellhousing flange and DS flange/length?

[cadillackid]

I think that trans has an SAE2 bell which is perfect for the DT engine since it is a native SAE2.. obviously if you asre going auto to manual you'll need to source Pedal and linkage assemblies.. im not sure about all the clutch bits for an eaton.. I can ask my buddy who swapped AT545 to spicer what he needed for getting the pedal and linkages for the clutch.. his bus is an S-series as well
-Christopher

[Booyah45828]

What engine did the road ranger come from behind?

You'll likely need a flywheel. You might get by with using the old one but typically they're drilled different for an automatic. Hopefully it will jive with the clutch/pressure plate he's giving you. If not, you'll have to source new ones of them as well.

You'll have to install a pilot pushing/bearing into the back of the crank. Hopefully that will jive with the input shaft of the transmission. Hopefully the input shaft is the correct diameter and length, they typically made a number of different ones.

You'll have to rig up the mechanical linkages to the clutch. There are push types and pull types so make sure you get the correct one.

Mounting the pedal and creating a working driveshaft should be one of the easier jobs, but it's still something that takes time.

You'll have to source the correct speedometer cables and adapaters if you want that to work. My ocd wouldn't consider the job complete if it didn't.

And that's all just off the top of my head. Plan on twice that amount of troubles because that's typically how it works.

[rwd4evr]

My bus is a 5 speed Spicer

[rwd4evr]

It's off a 12.7 Detroit which I'm told is sae #1. Is my Spicer equipped dt(a?)360 a #2 or #3? I've gotta get under it and see the trans numbers to know what exactly I have. Is there markings for the sae numbers?

[Booyah45828]

Whoops, I thought you were replacing an at545.

If your road ranger is off of a series 60 detroit, that would be almost certainly an sae1 flywheel housing. The place you're buying it from should be able to measure it to confirm, but I'd about guarantee that.

You might be able to swap the flywheel housing on it to an sae2, but I'm not certain or familiar with that specific model road ranger.

Your flywheel housing on the dt360 should be sae2, but it might have a simple adapter ring to make it sae3. Being that it is currently a manual, I'd say you probably don't have the adapter ring.

You can determine what you have with a tape measure, here is a chart with the
specs.



If all you want is overdrive, there are a handful of 7 speeds with sae2 housings that will give you overdrive. The problem with your higher input rated transmissions is that they require larger clutches that won't fit in an sae2 housing.

A spicer ES066-7B would give you what you want, and should be somewhat easy to find.

A eaton RTO-6610 would give you overdrive with 10 speeds. It would be a better upgrade, but wouldn't be as common as the other one and would be more expensive.

[rwd4evr]

Yes from what I've gathered it's a sae1 on the trans. I've found an Eaton fuller sae2 bellhousing. It's almost as much as the trans setup though[emoji19] the 9 speed is great in that it will handle 1450 ftlbs but it's non syncro and needs a clutch brake I'm unfamiliar with, and always double clutching. The . 73 od is ideal though. On top of that I'll need air for the dual Range. So as much as a 700$ full set up sounds great it's by no means a simple swap. The input shaft could be a custom piece as well. The guy at eprogear on eBay has been really helpful and seems to know what's what.

[Booyah45828]

Don't be intimidated by a clutch brake. Since this is unsynchronized, A clutch brake is used to stop the input shaft from turning so you can shift into 1st. The clutch brake is active at the end of the clutch travel. So at a stop, push the clutch to the floor, shift it into 1st, and then go about normally.

Normal shifts you only push the clutch down about half way or so, depending on the clutch adjustment. Do not push it to the floor every shift, or you'll wear out the clutch brake in a hurry.

As far as double clutching goes, there a many truckers out there not using the clutch at all, shifting by matching the rpms. I don't drive enough to be confident to do that, but I don't double clutch either. I do it by simply lifting off the throttle, and while lifting, slide it out of gear, push in the clutch, slide into the next gear, release the clutch and on you go. It's a timed and fluid motion, so if you don't get it you'll grind, but it's quicker shifting then double clutching.

[Booyah45828]

Truthfully, you should be able to find a 6 or 7 speed single counter shaft transmission with OD that will work for less then what you'll have in getting that road ranger to work. Plus, most of those medium duty transmissions will be either semi or fully synchronized.

You don't need the 1000+ ftlb capacity of a twin countershaft transmission, along with the increased weight that they have, and not being synchronized. And you're rpm range is broad enough that you don't need 10+ speeds either.