It all started July before my senior year of high school. I had just bought a 1977 Chevy K1500 to restore for senior year, but I wanted a diesel something bad. A good family friend had one show up at his mechanic shop and it was exactly what I wanted. A VERY rough 1993 Dodge W250 with a 12 valve Cummins.

We set to work getting everything mechanical to come to life, then focusing on untangling the custom electrical job. My dad and I spent about 30 hours on body before sending it to a good friend to paint. When we got it back, I almost didn’t recognize the truck. After spending some cash on new interior parts, bumper, clearance lights, and some new turn signal lenses (all from LMC) we had it looking almost done. But we were still missing a few big components, so we decided to go with a flatbed as we couldn’t find a new bed, and the truck did not come with one (had we even found one, we were pretty much burnt out with body work).

After mocking up the bed we realized it was too tall, so we frenched it in over the frame rails to lower the bed and hide a little more of the frame rails. After a new leveling kit and some new wheels and tires we were ready to hit the road… for 3 weeks. Then the old 46RH decided it was done living behind that Cummins and gave up. One month later and a lot of hours mocking up, fabricating, moving and assembling, I have a new NV4500 that is ready to go. Not too bad when I am still 2 months out from my 18th birthday.