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.




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
The guy at the machine shop was impressed so guess I did it right




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.


With the engine and trans out of the way I could turn my attention to the rest of the truck.