Ok, sounds good. I doubt i'll be putting much more than 2,000 miles on the van in a year, so rotating the tires won't be a big deal.

Any idea how much 10 ply tires cost? Was I even close by estimating $100 a tire?

 

recon,

Tires have gone up a lot in the past year or so. You're probably looking about $150 each. Since you're not going to drive the van much, you need to make sure you try to drive it once a week or once every other week. You don't have to drive it a lot, but maybe take it on a quick trip to the store. It's not good for vehicles to sit for long periods of time. Have fun!

toe

 

Couldnt agree more. This will do 2 positive things for your van. First, it will help prevent the tires from flat spotting. Once a tire flat spots, it can easily throw a tread, or blow out. Secondly, it will help keep the engine and tranny internals lubricated. Reducing wear on the set. It will also help from your wheel bearings developing flat spots in them.

 

Yeah, I'll definitely be driving it in between trips, i'll shoot for at least once a week. The van is actually kind of fun to drive (at least to me), so it may be difficult for me to only drive it once a week.

The money for tires shouldn't be a big deal, once I sell my truck I'll have all that money (hopefully I can get at least $3,500 for it) to go between a small car for a daily driver, and then some extra stuff for the van.

The van should turn out to be a great toy hauler. I have a few small cabinets that i'm going to bolt down in the back, and then I'll make a trip to harbor freight and stock the van up with all the tools I could possibly need to work on the quads. It seems like whenever we go on trips, we never have all the tools we need to make even simple repairs because the tools end up scattered around between the basement, garage, and shed, but never actually in the tool box. Last weekend I tightened my rear wheel lug nuts with an adjustable wrench, on the end of a bit driver extention for drywall screws, which was then attached to an adapter with an impact socket on the end. Pretty sad, all I needed was a 14 mm socket and a ratchet, but that was scattered all over the shed back home and I was assuming that someone else was bringing tools.

 

sweet surf van [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img] oh wait ATV!

 

I looked at your pics and the van is actually in better shape than I would have figured for the age & price. I would say that you got a good deal.

 

It's not really in quite as good of shape as it shows in the pics - or at least wasn't that good when I got it. The panels behind the back tires had rusted out before, and the body filler was cracked and falling out, but that's already fixed. Same with the 3 inch rust hole behind the driver's door. There's too many little dents all over it to fix all of them, but it was a work van for a long time, so that's not a surprise. The engine and trans are amazing though, at idle standing on front of the van with the hood up, i can't hear a single tick, tap, squeak, or any kind of other noise you'd expect from an older vehicle. It's by far the oldest vehicle i've ever owned, and the engine sounds better than any of my 3 previous vehicles, and the mustang only had 35,000 miles on it. Too bad it isn't fuel injected, that's the one thing that would be nice to have on this, but i imagine that wouldn't be very easy or cheap to retrofit. I'll manage fine with the small amount i'll be driving it.

One thing I have to do eventually, at least before march when the state inspection is due, is get a smog pump for it, because the owner told me that it was removed to look for a replacement, and somehow managed to walk off and he never found a replacement anyways. I don't even know what a smog pump is to begin with, or where it belongs. I was looking all over the engine compartment, and I can't really figure out where it might belong. Some of the a/c system was removed, so there's unused hoses, wires, and brackets everywhere from that, and i don't have slightest clue where the smog pump would fit in, or if i'm even looking in the right place to begin with. Can anybody help me out with that? At least enough to point me in the right direction of where to look, or what I may need aside from the new pump itself.

New shocks too, definitely needs new shocks. When I swerve it feels like i'm swaying in a boat going over waves.

 

Got a few updated pics. Not done yet, but it does look better.

front

back

is that smoke?

opened up

 

I've been looking all over the internet researching tires, and wasn't having much luck. I went to the local tire place, and made more progress there, but unfortunately I found out that NOBODY makes 10 ply tires for 15 inch wheels. I don't want to have to buy new wheels, so I did the next best thing and ordered a pair of the highest weight rated 15 inch tires that I could find that would still fit in my wheel wells. They're still not weight rated for the van when it's fully loaded, but I won't be loading this thing to the max anyways. These tires will give me another 1,000 lbs of weight capacity, which is better than nothing.

What really doesn't make sense to me, is why would this van have came from the factory with tires that weren't weight rated for the thing, even when it's completely unloaded? Were tires more durable back in 1984, or did dodge just not think this through or not care?

 

Not sure, so your mileage may vary, but the smog pump is used to pump fresh air into the exhaust ahead of the cats. My parents had an LTD that had one and it was located on the lower left of the 302 under towards the bottom curb side of the motor under the A/C. It was driven by a dedicated belt off the crank. Look for an unused pully down there. There should be some, most likely metal, tubing going to the exhaust manifold somewhere.

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