Project Pieces

[b.damon10]

Hello everyone,

Like I said in the welcome forum, thought I would join in the fun.
So here is my project build.

Its a 99 Dodge Dakota R/T what when I got it over a year ago it had two tires in the junk yard. The place I bought it from did an out standing job of hiding things, including saw dusting the engine.
I always like the Dakotas and wanted an R/T. My last Dakota, This is my third one, was a plane Jane truck and it got totaled out side my house in January 2015 by a drunk dude. Thank God it was parked at the time.

When I bought Pieces I only had it for a month before issues started showing up and I stated tearing into the engine to find out the extent of the damage.
This about sums it up. The whole engine was a goner.
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So I decided to rebuild it into a 408 stroker using a Scat crank and a host of other parts.
Its the original block and oil pan but other then that is all new.

I did not want to spend the money on aluminum heads at the time so, I went with some Engine Quest iron heads that I did the port and polish job my self, with a Dremel :razz:
The guy at the machine shop was impressed so guess I did it right
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Its all together now and according to the math and similar builds it should be about 500 HP and 580 foot pound of torque so it should hall that truck around just fine.

Dodge did not put manual transmissions in the R/T Dakotas but there was no way I was going put an auto behind this thing. So I started hunting for a Viper T56.
I Found one in a junk yard that only has 20k miles on it.
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With the engine and trans out of the way I could turn my attention to the rest of the truck.

[b.damon10]

The idea/goal is to take something that dodge never intended to be a corner carver, like Dodge is good at that any was, and build it into one.

So I started dismantling the truck and found more and more rot. Eventually I just went for it and tore it down to the frame.
The back half of the frame was rotten and needed rebuilt along with most everything ells.
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At this time I took a step back and worked up a plan because just tackling each issue one at a time was not going to work.

So after a few weeks of reading on this forum and other resources I worked up my plan and have been steadily executing it.

I decided to set the front cross member at 4 inches off the ground and Z drop the rest of the frame to match, this puts the lower control and parallel to the ground and with it being a street driven truck I could not see going any lower on a sprung suspension.

So here's the mock up with 2x4s and strings so I can get an idea of the center of gravity anti-squat whats going to go ware and clearances
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Sorry those are at strange angles.

One thing I did fined was that the engine was off center to the passenger side by over 3 inches and that was not acceptable so I cut the motor mounts off and built my own so the engine will be centered in the truck, more on that later.
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[b.damon10]

With the frame all mocked up and all the measurements taken it was time to cut it and rebuild.
Old frame rails after cutting them free
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Oh I don't have a frame table or room for one so I built a rack out of 2x4s and plywood and leveled it on the floor to work from, so far its working grate.

I went back and forth on what size steel to use for the new frame rails and settled on 2x4 11G box tubing. I now most guys use 2x3 or something similer but it is a truck and may be asked to hall or toe something so I went one step bigger.

started building the new frame rails
and used the old ones as reference for the cab and bed mounts.
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With the new frame rails tacked up and ready for fitment I started working on mating the old to the new
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The two parts of the frame even with out the engine and trans sitting it in there heavy enough that it was hard to just leave them tacked up and not have something shift. So I welded them up solid
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I do have some clean up work to do and still need to weld in the tops there the frame is open, I wanted to be sure the cab and everything was going to clear before I closed it up, did not want to have to cut it back apart.

When it was all welded up and I checked it for square I was less than a 16th off. I'm not a pro fabricator but my brother is and I asked him if that was acceptable and he started laughing and said that was about as perfect as it gets.
not bad for a garage floor build I guess :)

Its late I will post more tomorrow

Thank you

[IMPALAMAN1]

Nice

[Supra510]

Off to a good start!