RESURRECTED RAM

NEAL NISSEN’S CUMMINS-POWERED 2008 DODGE RAM 1500

Like most gear heads Neal Nissen, the owner of Injected Diesel Performance in Mountain View, MO, is always on the lookout for good project trucks especially if he can stuff a Cummins diesel under the hood and create a fun new ride. One such truck is the 2008 Dodge Ram 1500 standard cab short bed seen here. After purchasing the truck for only $1,400 with a blown 4.7L V8 gas engine that was already pulled from the engine bay he decided to transform it into a Cummins powered daily driver. Using a running and driving 2006 Dodge Ram 3500 as the donor truck he and friends Brendan Patten and Danny Boyd swapped the drivetrain into the 1500 and had it

RESURRECTED RAM

running and driving in just five days with the stock Cummins engine and 48RE automatic transmission.

Not long after finishing the truck in early 2017 Nissen got the bug to wrench on the truck some more and pulled the transmission to do a complete performance rebuild. Using high performance components including a BD Diesel billet input shaft as well as Raybestos GPZ clutches, and steels throughout the transmission he built it to withstand just about anything he figured he’d throw at it.

It is linked to the Cummins engine through a BD Diesel SFI flexplate bolted to the crank and a Diesel Performance Converters triple disk billet torque converter with a 2,200-rpm stall speed. But of course, with a transmission being built to handle more power that means the engine needs to be built to make more power!

Before the summer of 2019 he decided to pull the engine and build it to be worthy of the transmission. Tearing into the common rail 5.9L Cummins he stripped it down to the block before replacing the stock pistons and rods with Mahle pistons and Wagler Competition Products Street Fighter connecting rods swinging through the stock cylinder bores on the stock Cummins crankshaft. The block was capped with a Patriot Race Engines ported cylinder head using Manton valve springs and pushrods to actuate and control the valves with input from the Hamilton Cams camshaft. The cylinder head is clamped down

Lifting the bright blue hood reveals the 5.9L common-rail Cummins diesel engine in all of its compound-turbo glory. Notice the bright blue powder coating that brings the body color into the engine bay.

A custom airbrushed valve cover caps off the powerful Cummins to give the engine bay a truly unique look.