I joined about a year and half ago when I bought a 245 diesel and was looking into turboing it. My back failed me and unfortunately I had to sell it before I had a chance to fix it up. So here I am again about a year and a half later and doing okay. A friend said he'd sell me his wrecked 245 with a D24T in it (he's a member here) for a donor for my lifted 245. So I'm pretty stoked and looking forward to the swap.
My background is pretty deep when it comes to 240's and I'm best known for building "pretty" cars that lean mostly towards modified street and/or track cars. I've owned more 240's than most of you would ever believe, so I'll just say I've owned a lot. Currently have 8 240's in various states. But this is only my 5th diesel and the first turbo.
I'll probably drive this clunker for a couple months to get familiar with the D24T and then pull the motor and prep it for installing it into my lifted 79 245. Not sure how crazy I'm going to get with it yet, if at all, but it will at least be sanitary. I can't do it any other way unfortunately.
I picked up my 79 245 as a lowered daily driver (from the same member) that had a leaking heater core. They didn't feel like fixing the heater core/blower fan so they sold the car to me cheaply. I had been wanting another lifted 240 daily driver (I've done 2 other lifted 242t's in the past) so this seemed like the right car at the right time.
To raise it up I took 4 front strut assemblies and made a pair that are 3" longer than stock. I used a piece of DOM tubing in the bottom to raise the strut insert. I installed a pair of diesel springs and this gave me 4-5" of lift over stock. Just to get it driving, I ovaled out the ball joint holes to get it close as I could back to 0 camber. I'll eventually make wider control arms to get a little negative camber, but it's working okay so far with no abnormal tire wear. For the rear I simply welded another upper spring perch to the current upper spring perch, used some Jeep rear springs a friend had laying around ( after the stock rear springs weren't tall enough) and bought some KYB rear shocks for a 67-72 chevy truck. All that gave me another 4-5" of lift in the rear.
For tires I chose a very aggressive mud terrain tire in 235/75-15 mounted on stock 7/9 series steelies. They required some "clearancing" of the body with a 5lb sledge in key places. They will fit a little better once I make some longer rear trailing arms, but for now it gets by.
I had the brush guards still from my last lifted 242 so I installed those along with a Volov accessory roof rack to get the general look I was going for.
I've been slowly fixing and upgrading it as I drive it everyday and it's slowly getting better and better. Clean this, replace that. It's almost never ending.
I also swapped in an 81-89 dash while I was replacing the heater core/blower motor since I prefer that style of dash. I basically swapped the entire dash and heater system from a parts car another friend had.
That's about where I'm at now. Driving it for the last 6 months or so, I've grown very fond of it and it gets lots of looks and attention everywhere I go. I think I've been asked if it's 4wd about a hundred times now.
I'll post some pics to try to make up for having to read all that ^
Unfortunately I didn't take a lot of pics when I first started working on it, but I'll share what I do have.
Freshly painted wheels and new tires waiting for their new home:
Cutting the struts:
Struts welded back together:
Test fitting rear tires and installing front struts:
Front fenderwell height:
First time out of the garage:
Brush guard installed along with 82 Turbo bumpers. Roof rack and spare tire also:
Rear brush guard(?):
Jeep rear springs added and it leveled it out nicely:
Good pic of the ground clearance and IPD splash tray:
Heater assembly out (never fun
):
Moving. 11 hour drive from Portland to central CA loaded with stuff. Stopped off at Lake Shasta for a photo:
Backyard in CA foothills:
Good view of the roof rack
Donor D24T
