DON - Your mentioning the HP & torque numbers for your '95 Dodge is why I got a PSD, and the fact I'd had two F150's before. My PSD stock is 210-215 HP depending on if you believe Ford or IH, the sticker on the valve cover from IH says 215 HP, and torque is 420 or 425 #/ft, I forget which. I got the ZF-5 spd manual which has proven to be the best transmission I've ever had in ANY vehicle. Shifts smooth and has never required anything but oil changes with synthetic ATF every 100,000 miles. I put a new LUK single mass flywheel/clutch kit in it about 240,000 miles. The old clutch except for the flywheel still looked like new. The ZF-5 spd beats the NP-435's my F150's had by a L-O-N-G shot. If I'd have gotten a Ram 2500 It would have had the NV4500 with the fifth gear problems where the gears came loose from the shafts. And the only NV-4500 I ever drove in a Ram 3500 with 100,000 miles had three worn-out synchro's, but the truck had suffered a lot of hard use. But I did NOT want another New Process/New Venture tranny in my '96. It's sad that NONE of the Big Three put a manual trans in their big trucks anymore.
I almost ordered an F350 because it had the Dana 60 mono-beam frt axle because the Dana 50 Twin-Traction Beam suspension is noted for fast frt tire wear but when I was putting 35,000 miles a year on my truck, all highway miles, the rear tires actually wore faster than the fronts. I'd rotate them every 40,000-50,000 miles to balance up wear frt-to-back, I got 127,000 miles out of a set of Firestone Wilderness AT tires back in the late 1990's. I could have run them longer but had a bad vibration in one of them so replaced them instead of rebalancing them. I had new MOOG greasable ball joints installed @ 150,000 miles and that's the ONLY repair I've ever done to the frt end. I did all four brakes on the truck around 250,000 miles. The frt pads still had some life left but the one rotor was warped pretty bad. The rear drums still looked like new.
For the relatively flat roads around the midwest where I drive my stock PSD handles anything I've ever asked it to do. And I like the fact that with over 40 gal. of fuel on board I can cruise almost 800 miles between fill-ups.
A $75 oil change is cheap, the fourteen quarts of 15W-40 Rotella for my PSD is $52, plus the filter @ $10 to do it myself. I've done something over 100 oil changes in my truck, every 3000 miles I put 14 quarts in and drain 13 quarts out and have NEVER added any oil between changes, except for one time I added a quart before a long trip when it had about 40,000-50,000 miles, it was down a quart and I wanted it full, it burned that quart in 600-800 miles just like always and I've never tried to keep it full since.
I don't have a LOT of need for a truck but I do enough stuff that I need something bigger than a small compact truck or 1/2 ton that I can justify keeping the old PSD around, like hauling 2500# of landscaping blocks. It was easier to have the guy on the forklift load a whole skid than to "finger-print" each block into the truck!
