Thought id share some pics of the dodge after i finally gave it the overhaul that it needed. Built a new from bumper for it, crossover steering, new gear box, lift pump, spent a few weeks sanding and priming it to get the old peeling paint smoothed out and sprayed it with some urethane hot rod black. all i need now is a clutch, Bad. any recommendations on a good affordable clutch would be great. I figured id start a build thread since a truck like this is an ongoing project and im always having little questions that i could just update this thread with from time to time rather then start a new thread for every little thing.

anyway heres some pics, theres quite a few.

heres the day i bought it.


first thing i did was clean up the engine bay

crossover steering and heim joint panhard bar, this is the bracket for the frame for the new panhard bar end

plug welded the threaded end into the stock peice

fell off the jack stands


that lasted for a little while till i ran the truck into a boulder pulling an illegal u-turn at night and bent the tie rod, then the next weekend i went offroading the brake line poped and i ended up plowing 3 trees over and demolishing what was left of the tie rod. after the cross support between the frame rails was ripped out and through the bumper from getting pulled out i linked the 2 pieces of the tie rod together with 2 large clamps with a wrench between them holding the 2 broken pieces together, i limped out of the woods to a flat bed and the truck sat for the last 2 months. from letting it idle all night in the woods i ran it out of diesel and killed the lift pump.

so i built a new bumper and rebuilt the steering







then i sanded and primed the truck for the last month or so untill it was smooth enough for paint. had to weld a few patches in the cab corners as well as patch up the holes for the 4 point mirrors someone had on this truck.

 

and after all that, heres the finished product for now.






somebody tried to slash my tire the other say, it seems like the knife couldnt puncture the tire leaving just a half inch long gash with a small hole that a plug was able to fix

 

nice! i am working on the body of my truck now....keep the pics coming! what size wheels and tires aew those?

 

I hope you're not running with a plug in the sidewall of your tire.

 

I like the front bumper, I may have to do something like that on my ugly *** truck.

 

no the plug is in the tread, i cant figure out weather i ran something over or if someone was that stupid to slash a tire in the tread. my brother said a truck was suspiciously circling the block and stopped next to my truck, after that it was on a flat in a hurry. I keep it in the driveway now just in case, nobody would **** with your truck on your property with the castle law in Florida, when its in the road its free game.

the rims are 17s with 35x12.5 pro comp mud terrains. tires do fairly poor in the mud and sand, they were just cheap and do well enough for the money. I'm happy with them.

the bumper was only around $250 weighing in at around 200lbs. the stock bumpers on these trucks are the worst bumpers i have ever seen, the main problem is in how low the frame rails are in relation to the body on these trucks. building strong bracketry is the hard part. mine is permanent to the frame, on these trucks it doesn't hurt the serviceability of anything, i can still do anything i wanted up front by just lifting the core support out.

project for the day is get the shity 6x9s out and get my cadence 6.5s with vifa home audio tweeters back in. after that i just need my 3000 watt amp back from warranty for the subs, i fried it from welding the cab corners, shot current up the ground side.