How Putting A 7.3 Turbo-Diesel Into My Rare Ford Vantruck Almost Got Me Evicted

8:45AM, February 9th, 2023. I awaken to the sound of a text message notification from the landlord. “Charles you need to take care of this ASAP.”

Uh oh.  I usually hear from him only once in a blue moon, and I paid the rent days ago, so this seemed uncharacteristically urgent. The image was taking a while to download, leaving me to groggily wonder which member of the flock had shed its parking pawl and taken a stroll down the hill into a neighbor’s house. Perhaps the cold snap had burst the unprotected water pipe feeding the front outdoor faucet, and I had turned the street into an ice rink?

The image came up, and I bolted up in bed like the action movie hero finding out in a dream that he was the villain all along, grabbing my own head and all. Yep, that is my Centurion E-350 vantruck being spacetime discontinuous, attached to a letter from the county about the disassembled and/or inoperable vehicles on the property. 

[Ed Note: Read our intro on Charles here: “I’m An MIT Enginerd And Battlebots Geek And This Is My Weird Van Collection.” Also read “How I Twin-Turbocharged My Econoline Van’s Tractor Engine Using Cheap Amazon Parts.” -DT]

The cardinal sin of the renter-gearhead — that of slacking off on your project car build in front of polite tax-paying, law-abiding people — had flown home to roost. After a year and a half of my ongoing fascination with terrible International Harvester IDI diesel powered vans, I knew my life would have to change dramatically from that day. 

This was going to get hectic. 

Welcome to Operation IDIocracy!

Let’s rewind all the way back to the fall of 2021. I had just finished Snekvan, the subject of its own deep-dive article, which proved out the basic architecture of the swap I wanted to do to the vantruck, excising its eternally-dying 460 big block gas engine. On New Year’s Eve of 2021, I craned the nearly 1000-pound 7.3 IDI out of Snekvan’s chassis. What a first engine swap, right? 

That’s right, while my friends were partying, I was studying the (compressor) blade. I plucked important parts for the swap from Snekvan’s chassis, including the diesel-specific engine and dashboard wiring harnesses. I also removed much of the window glass and whatever interior parts remained for my collection or to sell later on, before handing the remains over to the local methy scrap men. 

Over the next 7-8 months of 2022, I slowly rebuilt the 7.3 with a few “stage 1” mods to prepare it for reliably operating under boost, resulting in the final product that nobody will ever see because there’s going to be a van over it.

Besides the usual seals and gaskets, I put in stiffer valve springs, a new oil pump, and high-tensile 180,000 PSI head bolts. I made a community-sourced modification to the coolant path, removing two plugs from the block and heads so that coolant could flow through the heads again. Apparently, this was changed going from the 6.9 IDI to the 7.3 IDI for the 1987 model year for emissions reasons, but the completely dry heads compromise the ability to make more power (and hence tolerate more heat). Telling me to drill holes in my brand new upgrade head gaskets was one of those “Okay… if you say so” moments indeed. 

By August, I had “bench run” the engine hanging from the stand and crane (as I trusted neither with clinging onto it alone). I was satisfied that I could at least drive enough for Internet Points, even if it blew up immediately offscreen! I put the whole thing away in a corner for a few weeks to address my obligations towards a small, obscure TV show about building robots that we all watched when we were little.

There it is, both of my 4-to-5-figure hobbies in one photo. I don’t think there’s a better “How I ruined my life” set background than these two. The big custom cart I made to hold the 7.3 IDI and E4OD transmission I called the “IDIot Gurney,” and it was to keep the thing mobile while I used the same space for the BattleBots season prep. 

After a post-project season hangover, I pulled in the vantruck just under the carport awning so the work I was doing was under cover, chocked the wheels, and began tearing apart the maze of hoses and belts to get to the block.

I dropped the fuel tanks and all the fuel lines, planning on moving to a more reliable single fuel tank using the ambulance/RV chassis 40-gallon unit. The driveshaft, custom-made to fit the Gear Vendors overdrive on the back of the old C6 transmission, came out as well. Soon, I was veritably swimming through 460-powered Ford truck paraphernalia.

Right before I pulled the engine out, I posted some Facebook group ads for the entire thing. None of this gear was relevant any more post-swap, and I didn’t want to become a used truck parts dealer, so you had to take the whole load.  I got lucky – almost instantly, two guys restoring a 1968 F-100 across town answered. They just happened to be searching for a powertrain to build up and swap, and boy did I have a powertrain to give them.

(I later realized that there was a model year change on the A/C condenser coil, and the 1991 part didn’t fit the 1986 space… Oops)

One chilly fall evening, out came the old rickety 460, with the transmission still attached. See, doing it the standard way with Snekvan – that is, supporting the transmission, breaking the dowel pin mates and shifting the engine, and then hoisting things out separately – was terribly awkward working by myself. I thought there was enough space to just do it as a single unit. I used a ratchet strap, hanging from the crane arm and attached to the water pump, as an “attitude controller”.  A series of “up, forward, adjust the angle” ops later, and my vantruck was no longer burdened with this analog emissions hampered, low compression paperweight. The weekend after, the aforementioned buyer of the 460 showed up and freed me from having to juggle two entire big-block truck engines in a two-wide carport!

The neat part to this was that I was thinking if the 460 and C6 could come out as a unit, it implied a way to wiggle the IDI and E4OD back in as well. This meant no exerting undue effort trying to line the bolt holes and dowel pins up in-situ. In fact, I was so sure of this I already pre-assembled the thing on the IDIot Gurney.

This operation was far more precarious because the IDI and E4OD weighed about 300 more pounds together. I had to install the starting batteries on the back of the crane as counterweights, and I greased all the wheels beforehand, knowing I didn’t possess the physical mass to move it otherwise. To get myself the maximum possible configuration space, I removed the front wheels and set the truck down on jackstands, with brake rotors just clearing the driveway. This abject unholy creation is what keeps Harbor Freight lawyers awake at night, shaking with anxiety.

[Ed Note: It’s just occurring to me that Charles is installing a 1,000 engine/transmission combo by himself! -DT]. 

The transmission tail housing was set on a furniture dolly so I could controllably slide it as I lowered the whole thing in. From the time I picked the engine up out of the IDIot Gurney to setting it down on the crossmembers was maybe half an hour! No catharsis at all, as I had pretty much only crossed the 50% mark here. The heavy thing was done, but the hookups all still had to happen.

In fact, I had to tackle a problem right away: Something’s different between the 1986 engine crossmember and the 1991. The transplant engine sat too high, and was tilted to the passenger side. It actually rubbed the paint off the right valve cover just dropping into position (This was really what I was the most mad about).

Comparing tape measure notes with the others, I got the impression that the driver’s side mount was sitting about 3/4″ higher, rotating the engine longitudinally in the chassis. The frame adapter was a stamped piece that held the mount up and away. To gain this ¾” back, I had to make a custom fully flat plate that could bolt to the crossmember and had the slots to slide the engine mount into. 

So, I did what I know best: Ruthless 3-dimensional piracy. I took a very long zoom photo of the mount with a ruler in the picture for scale, and imported this into my design program of choice. With careful scaling of the image to match the dimensions, I just drew myself a new bracket with the hole and slot placements informed by the part itself. (The optical zoom-in is necessary to flatten perspective, which can otherwise throw off your placements)

To close the 3-dimensional piracy loop, I 3D printed a mockup, lifted the engine up slightly again, and slid it in. Perfection!

The engine no longer was touching the sheet metal of the cab, even if it still sat slightly high. I decided to just work with this, and committed the part to ¾” thick plate steel by throwing the DXF file at SendCutSend, one of a growing number of online metal fab shops that can turn your most lurid dreams to sheet metal and plastic in a matter of days. A few moments of bicep rippling later, cranking a ¾” diameter thread tap through the pilot holes in the steel plate, I had the engine and transmission tightened down.

With the “heavy thing” fully out of the way, I had to begin preparing the infrastructure for the new fuel tank, driveshaft, and other supporting systems. This involved popping the bed off and welding up a new set of hanger bars for the fuel tank straps. This is where I messed up: I went inside. 

Despite hailing from what’s essentially the Pennsyltucky of China, I have more in common with a tropical gecko. As fall gave way to winter, my willingness to work on stuff decreased drastically. And so the vantruck sat disassembled like so for a few weeks. Long enough for a wandering code inspector — who might have seen the gaggle of vans in the driveway before, but they all had license plates and seemingly shifted positions periodically — to come by again. 

“If They Write Another Ticket, We Could Pursue Eviction”

I was certainly in a diesel-tinged pickle here. The violation was actually dated January 13th and gave 30 days of notice before fines accrued, but ol’ landy didn’t receive the letter until February. Credit where it is due, he got me on a call with the code department, buying me until the end of February to do something.  The violation wasn’t just concerning the Centurion vantruck, as the others at the time (the other vantruck, the tow truck, and the Citicar cheese wedges) were just kind of strewn in the back yard. Whatever the case, my landlord demanded that the yard be cleared of vehicles and everyone who was rightfully registered and insured had to be in the driveway.

Practically every wrenching aficionado eventually has the Come to Greasy Jesus talk with themselves, when matters come to a head, oftentimes something forcing their hand. I resolved to focus on getting the vantruck drivable as soon as I could, so that I could start looking for a place to buy without a hulking paperweight to tow around. I wanted any future battles to be my responsibility. I will nitpick the local government all day long, but I believed asking someone else to do that on my behalf was unfair. 

Most tragically, I decided it was time to cull the fleet and sell some junk. I decided against paying for parking at a nearby RV/boat storage lot or burdening my friends with driveway art. Like I said – this was my Wake up Charles, playtime is over self-slap. I elected to keep the two Centurion vantrucks and definitely my Mitsubishi van, and that meant the Sebring Citicars and Econocrane had to go. 

The raucous ad I wrote for Econocrane attracted the attention of none other than the legendary Speedycop, who drove down a few days later and loaded it up along with the Citicars. Dude’s got plans and I hope to see something absurd come out of his team of misfits… errr, Gang of Outlaws. Maybe I could have gotten more cash if I held out for dedicated buyers, but I think many of you would also trade some of that cash to see your abandoned hopes and dreams get put to good use by a member of the community.

I had only relieved half of my Sisyphean-feeling burdens, however. The vantruck still sat in the driveway in two very disparate locations. I’d need to rally some help to get the fuel tank mount finished and the bed mounted again.

A strike team conjured up from Facebook chats and work Slack channels rallied the same weekend, helping me lift and secure the fuel tank into place, cut and set some lines, and then maneuver the bed onto its mounting rails. We were like the 82nd Airborne – or perhaps, the 82nd Ground Lug.  Not only that, but we also pushed it a few feet further into the carport (something about Sisyphean efforts…) See? It’s totally driveable! Got up there all by itself. 

Some of you are probably wondering why I embarked on this very heavy and unwieldy quest alone, and the real answer is because I just don’t have a wrenching circle. The vast majority of my friends at this point are married, career-focused parents with extended families. Spare time comes at an extreme premium, and I get their help when booked weeks in advance. I, on the other hand, could walk outside and hit something with a wrench and then fall asleep on the couch, so I devised ways to handle tasks on my own. It’s simultaneously liberating and concerning in a “…wait, where’d everyone go?” way.

The Race Against My Lease Renewal

After that week and a half of putting out the raging life wildfire, I was able to breathe a sigh of (relative) relief. I had only one project to deal with. Everything else ran and drove fine. It was probably the first time in many years I didn’t have multiple simultaneous things going on, my usual M/O. But it forced me to focus on the goal: I wasn’t going to renew my lease again. 

Not for any interpersonal reasons with ol’ landy, since he not only put up with three years of my private junkyard and even went to bat against the inspector to buy time. I was just on a warpath to never again face a situation where someone could tell me to clean my stuff and leave. In the spring of 2023, the sky-high mortgage rates were just a cost of doing business, a number to factor into the calculus. I had to balance taking the house search too seriously and making sure Operation: IDIocracy reached criticality. 

Much of the work right after “the heavy things” was very rote. Run these hoses. Install this pump. Make a bracket. Replace the old, sagging front springs with ambulance duty ones to take the weight of the new engine. Take my design of the turbo downpipes from Snekvan and finalize them, then cut some pipes and produce new ones:

Some people say I’m only motivated by rage and spite, and sometimes this feels true. I think it’s more about balancing the proverbial carrot and the stick. Historically, when I was a student and then a post-grad researcher, I let my mind, and hence projects, wander. If it weren’t for the building manager yelling at me, they might never have been finished and rolled out. 

But I’m different now (mostly older, not necessarily less scatterbrained) and I absolutely will take as long as I please, thank you very much. 

Enough philosophy on the Nature of Man and Van though. There laid only one significant design challenge between me and the first light-off, and that was the new engine wiring harness I had to invent. 

You see, I made the choice to go with an E4OD transmission donor  because I wanted the integrated overdrive. The Gear Vendors overdrive that I had before with the C6 three-speeder just felt like another point of worry and thing to maintain. It would have been the far simpler way to go, since it required no additional wiring and only a vacuum hose and modulator valve. That “E” in E4OD, unfortunately, stands for Electronic. 

That meant I had to join Snekvan’s 1991 engine harness with Vantruck’s 1986, all analog chassis harness. I knew this was going to happen, so I bought factory wiring diagram reproductions for both years. While not outside banging knuckles, I was studying the BLADE wiring diagram and drawing up, in Ford’s old OEM notation for consistency, the hybrid harness that would use both ends of what I already had in hand. 

The finished product is the massive blue bundle running across the lower windshield sill. On the passenger side, the 1991 E4OD control module harness. On the driver’s side, the repackaged 1986 engine/dashboard harness. They meet at a confluence of Weather-Pak connectors with my own defined pins and labeled circuits, with several blank ones that lead to tied-off wires in the dashboard for future expansion. I ran all-new 2/0 gauge welding cables to an upgraded battery tray that will house a single Group 31 hybrid AGM battery, instead of mounting dual batteries like the OEM setup. A new high current feeder line also runs through the big bundle for cabin accessories. I christened this absolute phenomenon the L.E.W.D: Legacy Electrical Wiring Distribution.

Honesty, I didn’t need to go so hard on this nearly OEM-quality wiring. But I absolutely loathe seeing project car spaghetti wires. I just know I’m going to have to dive back in here in a few months when it breaks, and I will thank myself when I see that all the circuits are labeled, everything is bundled, and my notebook tells me where it’s going. 

With the heavy lifting and two-brain-cell-rubbing moments out of the way, the last few hurdles were almost pleasurable, like little magazine puzzles. While sitting around crimping and splicing wires, I was thinking of how to run the air intake ducts. The smashed-together prototype for Snekvan just had air filter cans stuck directly onto the turbos. I wasn’t going to let that fly for the final product, and wanted a clean and stealthy look – nothing jutting out of the grille, Bosozoku style. That’s a look for another project some day. 

By pure chance, I discovered that the inner fender apron was rusting out on the passenger’s side, previously hidden from view by the battery tray. But cutting the rust away also heavily implied I could stick an air filter up through it. So that’s what I did… 

I took some basic dimensions and made a mockup of an air filter mount, 3D printed in PLA plastic. This necessitated elevating the battery tray I just installed by 3 inches, but that was easily taken care of by some tube steel. The mounts situated the air filters right next to the headlights, which even had existing access holes. I designed in little tabs that could be cut to match the space, because it also had to fit the driver’s side:

Here, I widened an existing hole and bolted in the air filter next to the windshield washer bottle. Once I was confident of the fitment, the PLA (low temperature and fragile) mockups were replaced with fiberglass-filled nylon 3D prints. And there you have it:  Stealth mounted air filters, right up front getting the best airflow possible. The only downside here was to clean the passenger side one, I’d have to eject the battery and tray. A fair compromise for now.  

Getting the air down into the turbos took some more creativity, because there is no space to do so inside the sheet metal. I considered cutting holes in the fenders to run a hose back and downwards, but van wheelwells are designed for the minimum amount of clearance possible. I think a bone stock E-350 van scrubs tires on the inside fenders if you go over a bump while near full steering lock. As you might expect by now, I went with the funny option.

This is the “Combination Intake Hose and Bump Stop”. It’s a footlong piece of 3″ diameter silicone charge air hose, secured upon the engine mount crossmember by fiberglass-filled nylon 3D printed clamps. I figured if I went Dukes of Hazzard in this thing enough to squish this tube, the momentary intake restriction was an acceptable tradeoff. 

The last puzzle to solve before I reached criticality was the exhaust. I learned my lesson with Snekvan and Econocrane: this thing absolutely, positively needs mufflers. First, I think straight piped IDI engines sound like garbage. And second, I was tired of hearing them at all. I simply played with the AP Exhaust catalog on RockAuto and found some 8″ round canister ones I thought would fit well in the region the OEM muffler used to sit. 

I banged together what were basically side dumps from a combination of Amazon, Rock Auto, and whatever was on the shelf at parts stores. The only real planning that went into this was that the elbow was positioned roughly where, in the future, I will be adding the dual stacks behind the cab. Up front, I just went full cheat code and used lengths of 3″ slinky pipe with the turbo flanges welded right to it.  Without an exhaust shop hookup and without tube fabrication equipment, I was just out to have something. 

And so, on the evening of April 24th of 2023, I went through the final checklist – fluids topped, battery fully charged, idled to warmed up state – and gently putt-putted around the block on a test drive.

Criticality. First light. The wave of simultaneous relief and excitement. This was the vehicular analog of the Overwatch2 update download bar flashing “PLAYABLE” at you. The download isn’t done… it’s just done enough.

I didn’t really try anything too exciting on this first drive. Just enough throttle to build some boost and watch the gauges, and enough speed to make sure I had all 4 gears. The downshift worked, and the overdrive lockout button also worked. Everything else from here was slowly getting to know the system and learning to trust it. The fresh honing job and piston rings will need a while to break in, so blowing 20 PSI into it will do no good right now!

Through the month of May, I took this thing around wherever I could to build miles and trust. It was barely put back together, really. The bumpers were missing, the alignment was severely eyeballed, and my bodged exhaust rattled embarrassingly. But those were all individually addressable problems or things to tolerate for now. 

What was really exciting was using it as the go/no-go gauge when I really amped up my house hunt. It doesn’t fit down the driveway, or the cut is too steep? Decline. Can’t make the turn around to the back yard? Decline. I had to be… realistic after all. My realtor refers to me nowadays as having the most unique set of needs ever expressed by a client. The hero of our story was also used to collect all the appliances I would come to need, embarking on Facebook Marketplace quests around much of the metro area. 

In the first two months, I put about 1500 miles on it, slowly inching up fueling and wastegate pressure while recording my complaints and feature wish list. As the height (and heat) of summer came around, I was going to an average of 1 or 2 local car meets and events a week, and was comfortable enough in the system to show off. Hey, if you’re going to explode, might as well do it in front of everyone so I have some video of it!

Where Are They Now?

There was just one final part of the story still missing. 

But it had to wait. In the early fall of 2023, I closed on my house, a serendipitous find that didn’t even come up in searches all summer. Somehow, after touring 15 properties and being prepared to give up for the year and begrudgingly renew with my landlord, I found the (David… sit down) holy grail. It had:

• Two driveways
• Expansive, flat, tree-lined back yard
• Full size walkout basement
• A four-bay steel shed/hangar 
• Less than half an hour from work
• Enough problems that everyone else before me backed out and ran away.

Perfection. Where do I sign?! 

Three consecutive weekends of moving the half-a-Home-Depot that is my life later, the van flock was situated.  In a singular cruel twist, the vantrucks don’t actually fit in the hangar: The driveway is downhill with a short landing, and they’re too long to break under the overhead door beams. Oh well! The hangar will be built up instead for welding & fab work, plus a lift for working on reasonably sized things.

I mostly parked the vans during the winter and focused my efforts on house and shop building. By March 2024, the basement was capable of spawning any electromechanical abomination I chose to, and the hangar saw its share of oil changes and tire rotations. As the weather warmed up, I targeted a yearly spring driving event for Vantruck’s final sea trial: The Tail of the Dragon.  

Before I embarked on its longest continuous trip yet, I wanted to strike the turbo bilge pump system off my “list of grievances.” I replaced the two Facet Cube clicker pumps with what I should have done in the first place: A motorized gear pump. You know, the ones that say “For turbocharger oil scavenging” on them, that you can buy in kits for people with turbochargers mounted in reckless locations. Those ones. That I ignored.  It turned out that the Facet pumps couldn’t keep up with 15W-40 engine oil turning into forbidden honey when it was cold, causing the turbos to flood out unless the engine was warmed up.  

The motor pump sits on another 3D printed bracket bolted to the engine mount cross member. The turbo oil drain hoses tee into the pump, and a small check valve on its output prevents the roughly 3ft tall column of oil from draining back down.

Since the motor pump drew much more current, I whipped up a control box housing a timer relay and some glue circuitry. It ran the pump for only 10 seconds when I keyed on but didn’t start the engine, or ran for 10 seconds after the engine was turned off. Otherwise, an oil pressure switch ganged into the turbo oil feed bypasses the relays, forcing the motor pump to run if the engine was running.

(Yes, yes, I reinvented a turbo timer. I know. The relays were right next to me!)

Well, I’ve kept everyone here long enough. Here are the press photos!

The last act before anything I own is fully commissioned into the fleet is to tackle the Tail of the Dragon. If I were anything less than thorough with my engine, suspension, steering, or brake work, I’ll sure find out. I consider a Dragon trip a great, if violent, shakedown. Should it survive, I know I can trust everything for day to day use. 

I don’t hold back either. Burn the ships. Return with your shield, or upon it. Hearing the harmonious turbo duet permeating the mountains as the boost rails out on the wastegates? That. That was cathartic. I have once again validated my own poor life decisions and bad financial planning. I would have it no other way. And late that night, I pulled into what was now my own driveway, powered off, and waited for the bilge pump to shut down. 

Tranquility. 

Evaluating in terms of “finishing your project car”, I felt like Vantruck made it out a success story. Many project cars, some of friends and people I know, barely make it to an Island of Functional Stability, if it even becomes functional. For myself, any number of things could have gone sideways that precarious period in time and I’d have been stuck with an immobile liability, hostile officials or landlords, and piling on debt at the worst possible time. 

Operation: IDIocracy was probably the largest project I had ever embarked on in terms of size and scope of integration. It stressed all of my project and resource management skills to their limit and was certainly well beyond the technical comfort zone I knew at the time. I never want to do this again, but the next time I can do it in two weeks is how I sum it up for people.

All Images: Charles Guan unless otherwise stated