Why is this 1996 Ram HD 3500 so special? Believe it or not, it’s because it is a crew cab with four regular doors. What’s the big deal? A huge majority of new trucks are crew cabs. Actually, crew cab pickup trucks are a relatively recent phenomenon. These big-cab trucks became popular in the early 2000s. Most older trucks were configured as a regular two-door cab or an extended cab. This 1996 Dodge Ram truck belongs to Jordan Driver. It’s a specialty built truck by Custom Conversions in Cleburne, Texas that was done in 1996 when the truck was brand new.
Here are more details from Jordan. Oh yea – this truck has a fold-out couch bed in the back. Jordan writes:
“The rear seat is not power-operated, but it can move about a foot and a half toward the front seats, and then the back can fold down making a bed. The rear seat is super plush like a soft mattress. The truck has 165,700 miles and at some point was swapped from an automatic to a manual (NV4500). The bed is a little rough, I have a new one that is a different color, a decent dent by the 3rd brake light. Typical clear coat peel and one crack in the dash. There are some cracking in the paint where the welds were, I would assume it is from them not adding a body mounts in the middle of the cab, they only retained the stock 4 in the front and rear of the cab.
Nothing major is wrong with any of the conversion pieces. I’ve completed a decent amount of maintenance fixing all of the things that have been neglected over the years, but so far nothing has been catastrophic. I find it weird they didn’t add speakers into the rear doors or wire up the rear dome light to turn on when a door opens.”
Here are few images of the truck.
Naturally, this dually is powered by a Cummins straight-six turbo-diesel with a few modifications. This truck is far from stock inside and out. Jordan drove it home several hundred miles after purchasing it. He says the big turbo diesel average around 15 MPG. It’s unknown what rear axle ratio this truck has.
Here are the fancy rear couch/bed/seat images and the original window sticker for this truck that also shows the delivery of this Laramie SLT to Custom Conversion in Texas.
If you guys want to learn more about this truck, we will try to get Jordan to do a “Dude, I Love My Ride!” walk-around video of his truck.
In the meantime, here is a red 2020 Ram HD 3500 going up and down the Ike Gauntlet – world’s toughest towing test.