Building the Ultimate 6.7L Cummins-Swapped Ford F-450

An Update on Our Newest Editorial Build

A QUICK RECAP

One thing we love to do here at Diesel World is getting our hands on a good old project truck to share with all of you! This is our newest editorial build—a 2008 F-450 that has been our main focus for the last few months! We’re taking this old 6.4L Power Stroke truck and turning it into what we consider the “perfect swap” with our friends at Miller Built Diesel and Diesel Conversion Specialists. From what we’ve seen on Facebook Marketplace, the common swap for these trucks is a 12-valve Cummins, but we want more reliability and power to be able to haul our other vehicles to shows by slapping a 6.7 Cummins in it. That way, we’ll have all the tunability of the newer common rail-style engines.

In the last issue, we got our engine to the machine shop to get everything looked over and freshened up in the block and then started assembling the bottom end of the engine to get ready for a fresh Kill Devil Diesel fire-ringed cylinder head.

Everything’s Coming Together

In the world we live in, society is super impatient (myself included), but perfection doesn’t always come together instantly. Waiting on a laundry list of parts is never fun. Luckily, we are working with some of the best companies in the industry to make this engine as stout as possible, which makes down time tolerable. Now that we have our ARP head studs, Fleece Performance intake system, KDD cylinder head, S&S Diesel Motorsport SuperSport CP3 and TorqueMaster injectors, Beans Diesel rocker box and valve cover, and powdercoated parts back from Bixby Powder Coating, this unit is finally ready to get sealed up.

Thanks to Miller Built Diesel, the process of getting the engine assembled was an absolute breeze. Between using a Hamilton fire ring head gasket and ARP 625 head studs, we should have a great chance of not having any issues with this Kill Devil Diesel fire-ringed head! These heads are brand-new cast cylinder heads with structural updates and USA-made valvetrains, which we absolutely love. We had to set it down in the part of the shop with the giant flag in the background for that reason!

Sealing It Up

The two-tone powdercoating is absolutely perfect—shout out to Bixby Powder Coating for the awesome work and quick turnaround to keep this project rolling! We’re super excited to have this engine be a little more spiffy than I thought it was going to be. It’s going to show everything so perfectly when we bring this to shows.

As I sat back and got the content for this article, Justin plugged away at torquing the ARP 625s in their desired sequence from memory. Don’t forget to follow the directions on these (or any head studs, for that matter) so you don’t have to take it back apart from missing the final torque or not using the supplied grease from ARP.

Next, the S&S SuperSport CP3 and TorqueMaster injectors went into the engine. We also made sure to follow the instructions intently and used new connecting tubes so we don’t have rail pressure issues or contamination from our old fuel system. We’re really excited to squeeze a little more power out of this engine now with the higher fuel rate of each of these parts, but the piece of mind acquired from running quality parts helps out so much knowing we’ll be on the road a lot with this truck.

Coming Up Next

Now that we’ve got the 6.7 sealed up and ready for fluids and a heat cycle, we’ll get our Randy’s Transmissions 5R110 and FTI low-stall converter, specially built for Cummins-swapped 6.4PS trucks, mated up with our engine using the billet DCS adapter plate and set it down in the truck. See you all in the next issue for a MAJOR step in this editorial build as we move another step closer to driving this unit!

Photos by Tucker Harris