AB_Rigger
Junior Member
Hey everyone. I just got a new truck and thought this would be a good place to acquire some knowledge. The truck started its life as an AGT service truck (Telephone company) until the company I work for bought it sometime in the 90's. We installed a hydraulic winch in the service body (We build and maintain cell phone towers) and the truck was used in that capacity. During the last 10 years it's probably only been used about 2 or 3 times however, so last year we removed the old winch and repurposed it onto a quick attach mount for a tractor/skid steer. The plan was to scrap this truck, but I asked my boss what he wanted for it and he said I could have it so I've been thinking about what I'd like to do with it (Free is always in my price range). I own a small acreage that I'll be building a house on in the near future and my current plan is to remove the service body and make a simple flat deck for the truck. A flat deck truck with a PTO will most likely be quite useful around the acreage. The body of the truck is fine aside from dents and scrapes, no rust whatsoever in the floor pans or rockers (Rare around here), however mice have found their way into the cab numerous times...nothing like the smell of hanta virus in the morning, but I should be able to clean it up inside well enough. It runs when fuel is being poured into the carburetor, but won't run on its own. It seemed to have some fuel pressure at the carburetor fuel filter and the fuel filter itself looked fine, but I don't know if there was enough fuel pressure, or if the fuel in the carburetor turned to varnish and gummed up all the orifices in the carburetor from sitting for so long. It was about a year ago when I tried to get it running (Only spent about 30 minutes before we decided to flat tow it to where it sits now), and it probably hadn't been ran for at least 4 or 5 years before that. I have several other vehicles, but I've never owned a Mopar product before and I'm not in any way knowledgeable about them, hence why I'm now here. I don't know the exact year of the truck but I think it's a 1989 Ram 350, it's 2wd (Unfortunately), has a 4 speed manual (Fortunately), and my boss thinks it's probably a 318 but it could also be a 360. I don't know if there's a visual difference between the two, but I'm hoping it's a 318 as I've heard a lot more good things about the 318 than I have about the 360. Here's some pictures of the truck and the engine. I'm not going to start overhauling it tomorrow (I have a few other car projects on the go that I need to finish first), but I thought I'd start thinking about it now so that I'll have a better idea of what I need to look for when the time comes, probably in the spring or summer.