So a little back story, in January a buddy and I made the 2,400 mile trip (one way) from Gainesville FL to Los Angeles CA in his 1999 Dodge 2500 (53 block 24V) and after some mechanical break downs, break ins, and the worst (and best) 2 weeks of my life we have decided we need a more comfortable truck. I am the head mechanic for Andrew Mensah Racing where we travel across country attending as many drift series and events as we can. After some discussion and countless hours on the internet, we found an amazing deal on a 2003 GMC Yukon XL 2500 and decided it would be the perfect tow bitch and picked it up on our way back from California. We knew we wanted to stay Cummins so after some searching, we found an even better deal on a 1997 12V. So here is my build thread...


this is how the 12V came... in a rolling frame





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sorry here are those pics:

 

so the next step was to pull the Yukon front end apart and the 6.0 4L80 engine out:







taking apart the 12V:



we were pleasantly surprised when we found how clean this engine was and it looked like the engine was recently rebuilt. we put the engine back together with ARP head studs, #60BD valve springs, 5x.013 110HP DAP injectors, and a #5 fuel plate.

 

first mock up putting the engine in, we weren't even sure if the Cummins was going to fit in the hole, also this is a 47RE totally rebuilt transmission





we were relieved to find out that everything fit with some minor hammer hits to the firewall but man the manual fan is close to the core support


here are some pics of how the stock mounts line up to each other
Passenger side mounts:


Driver side mounts:

 

Nice Project dude!! I'm jealous.....

 

Engine mounts:



Passenger side:

Driver side:


We picked up some hockey pucks to finish off the motor mounts



After getting the engine mounted the next task was to figure out fuel. We pulled the 2 fuel tanks and cleaned out the gas. If you are unfamiliar, this Yukon has one fuel tank (about 10 gal?) that is connected to the filler tube that has a lift pump to a bigger tank (about 15-20gal?)that then feeds the engine. We got a
Airdog FP150 in replacement of the primeray pump and mounted under the driver side door, we arent sure if the factory lifter pump will be able to handle diesel but we figured we would try it out since its only a transfer pump. Finally we customized the airdog feed and return lines to fit.

 

So it has been a little while since I have updated but we have made a lot of progress since….

We finally got the engine mounted down permanently and had our first start up:


so the next step was to make the tranny mount as well as fab up the 4 inch down pipe. This required some firewall modification (aka a BFH to the firewall) so that the Banks-Jake Brake/down pipe combo would clear.

Tanny mount pics:




We also had to get the proper drive shaft so we took the stock Yukon drive shaft and cut down, welded in the dodge yoke to it, and of course balanced it.
After that we had to figure out a way to make all the coolers fit. The 12V is much longer than the 6.0 and with the mechanical fan being an inch or less from the core support we had to come up with something. We toyed around with many different combinations of what inter-cooler to use (stock or aftermarket) or even how to make everything fit. In the end we were managed to make it work with some modifications. We used the stock dodge radiator and inter-cooler (that came with the rolling frame), the Yukon A/C condenser, Yukon power steering cooler, and an aftermarket transmission cooler (in that order from engine to grill). And the best part, the grill/bumper, headlights, and hood latch all fit with very minor modification.


















For the wiring we are using all factory wiring harnesses. We stripped down the GM engine harness and are still using the GM ECU to send signal to the BCM for coolant temp and oil pressure. We then stripped down the Dodge 12V harness to control the transmission. We had to build a custom shift linkage bracket to convert the Yukon shift linkage to the Dodge transmission as well as had to make a custom gas pedal to convert from the drive by wire to the 12V dive by cable.
Couple more little things and we should be driving it soon.

 

That's so bad ***

 

DUDE, I FREAKING LOVE IT!!!!! EXCELLENT JOB GUYS!:tu:

 

Looking forward to a video of it ripping down the road

Jake

 

Thats badass but you gotta get that Dodge cover off the valve covers. Do you think the torsion bar suspension is gonna last with 600 extra lbs of engine up there ?