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Dorodango Dodge Dakota

52K views 191 replies 18 participants last post by  93trooperpooper 
#1 ·
It's Old, it's Ugly, and it Stinks!:

Before I begin, let me give you a bit of back story. I own a 5-acre lot in the Denver metro area and I've been doing a ton of work to the house that sits on that lot. Just about every weekend, I hitch up the trailer to my Isuzu Rodeo Sport and drag it down to the local lumber yard. When I want to make a quick run, though, lugging the trailer along becomes inconvenient. I've been looking for a pickup that I can use for those weekend runs but around here, everything is expensive. Even with 200k miles on the clock, finding a 4WD truck for under $4k is tough.

Toyota's and Nissan's hold their values too well, Rangers and S10's seem to be few and far between, and I didn't want a full size truck. The Dodge Dakota, on the other hand, seemed readily available and much less expensive than it's Japanese counterparts. I've always been a fan of the styling and I like that i can get it with a V8.

While running through my usual list of searches on Craigslist and eBay, I found this truck. It was close enough to pique my interest but the auction wasn't very thorough and the pictures blurry. I let the auction run its course. A few days later, it popped up again for a bit less. I asked the seller a few questions but didn't get enough info to feel it was worth the risk. That auction lapsed and it was reposted again. Finally, I asked the seller to include a Make Offer button and I sent along an offer for $400.

I knew the truck was rough by what I could see in the auction photos. When I went to pick it up I discovered it was even worse. I talked with the guy while we waited for a tow truck to come get the Dakota. I then had it towed back to my workshop. The 30-some-odd tow set me back about $140.

So here we are. This is Jack. He's a 1999 Dodge Dokota SLT 4x4 with the 5.2 liter V8. He's had a rough life.



What Did I Get Myself into?:

Now that the truck is in my workshop and I've had a good look at it, here are some notes on what I got. First, cosmetics. Every panel on the truck has some sort of damage with the most notable areas being the damage to the front (hood, grille and bumper) and the passenger side (door and cab). There is also damage to the driver side cab corner including a tear and puncture. The box is really beat up, especially its bulkhead.

Miscellaneous items are missing including the wheel well liners, the fasteners for the cowls and the passenger side fender flare.









Up front, the headlights are yellowed and each has some broken mounts. The driver side headlamp fits poorly. The fog lights are gone though their torn brackets are still bolted to the bumper. The foglight wiring hangs down from beneath the radiator.



Taking a look at the suspension, it is tired and needs some maintenance. All of the rubber on the suspension is dry rotted. The passenger side axle boot is torn and the axle rusted. The passenger side front shock somehow disconnected itself from the lower control arm. I don't think either the axle or the control arm are salvageable.



Looking at the driver side of the truck, the rear wheel isn't centered in the wheel arch. A closer look shows that the axle block is shifted forward with its alignment pin sheared off and the u-bolts are bent rearward.



Before I talk about how it runs or how the interior looks, there is a little back story that I ought to mention. For an unknown reason, about a decade ago, the truck was parked in a field and left to sit. In that time, generation upon generation of mice moved in, pissing and crapping all over every last bit of interior. Those mice ate the seat foam, the carpet insulation and the wiring. Sometime in that span, rabbits crawled onto the engine and ate as much wiring as they could find.

The smell inside the cabin is nauseating. As I'd say when I was younger, it gives you the spits. It's the overpowering stench of years of mouse urine. On top of that, the previous owners smoked it in pretty heavily. So you're left with this smokey mouse urine smell which punches you in the face. Consider yourselves lucky that the internet isn't scratch-and-sniff.



Those little critters chewed and chewed and chewed. They ate all the wiring to the #2 and #4 fuel injectors. Still hungry, they then ate all the wiring to the intake air temp sensor. Insatiable, they continued to eat wiring. They devoured the wiring to the alternator, they chomped the wiring to the headlights, they even found the underhood light and lobbed it's electrical connections in half. No wiring, no circuit was safe. Now oddly enough, when I went to pick it up, the guy started it for me and it ran surprisingly well. Especially well given what was disconnected.

Here's what's left of the wiring to the injectors, intake air temperature sensor and alternator field coils:





The headlight harness was also chewed with the passenger side being much more damaged than the driver's side. I suspect this was due to the proximity to the airbox. Criters had used that airbox as a nesting site. In the headlight harness, there is a ground with 2 wires. I'm not sure what it grounds but it's completely gone. Of all the lights on the front corner, only one wire was left connected:





Same thing goes for the under hood light. Just about every wire has some sort of chew damage.



I was able to get the truck to start and idle. It sounds surprisingly good given the damaged to the wiring noted above. Unsurprisingly, the Check Engine light is on.

Additionally, the truck also has some notable mechanical problems. When running, the power steering pump whines loudly. When driving around the yard, the transmission pops out of gear when the throttle is pressed. And the radiator is nearly empty.

With all of these problems, you have to ask yourself: "Is it worth saving?" and that's a fair question. But honestly, what the hell else am I going to do?

So is there anything good going on with this truck? Well, first, it is the SLT model so it is well optioned. Now those options don't work because they've been chewed, but they are there. Second, it has a receiver hitch already installed. Third, the rear window is the sliding type window. And last, it has the wider wheels with 31x10.5 tires on them.
 
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#127 ·
Sprayed on a few coats of Duplicolor truck bed coating this afternoon. Half the damned state is on fire right now so I had to keep blowing ash off of it with compressed air while spraying. The orange hue these photos have is accurate.







Don't know how thrilled I am with this product. We'll see how it dries and how it holds up.
 
#128 ·
I have tried many of the spray on bedliner products. We used to use it a lot when fabricating stuff for City vehicles. I still do at my "new" job. Duplicolor USED to be a good one, then they changed it. Currently, I find the best (from a rattle can) to be RAPTOR. It sprays on good, has a nice texture, and seems to hold up better. Currently, I have been using it on channel aluminum that I use to make risers for light bar installations. My light dump trucks need something to raise the bar enough so that it is visible above the front of the bed. I also recently used a rattle can of Raptor to spray the roof rails on my Subaru Baja. (15.99 from Autozone). Very pleased with the results.
I had previously used Raptor from a can on the roof of my Spacecab (way back). In spraying, something went wrong and I ended up rolling it. It came out looking like I had coated the roof of my truck with cottage cheese (I used white). I had a heck of a time getting the stuff stripped off my roof. Dennis
 
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#129 ·
DSUZU said:
I have tried many of the spray on bedliner products. We used to use it a lot when fabricating stuff for City vehicles. I still do at my "new" job. Duplicolor USED to be a good one, then they changed it. Currently, I find the best (from a rattle can) to be RAPTOR. It sprays on good, has a nice texture, and seems to hold up better. Currently, I have been using it on channel aluminum that I use to make risers for light bar installations. My light dump trucks need something to raise the bar enough so that it is visible above the front of the bed. I also recently used a rattle can of Raptor to spray the roof rails on my Subaru Baja. (15.99 from Autozone). Very pleased with the results.
I had previously used Raptor from a can on the roof of my Spacecab (way back). In spraying, something went wrong and I ended up rolling it. It came out looking like I had coated the roof of my truck with cottage cheese (I used white). I had a heck of a time getting the stuff stripped off my roof. Dennis
Thanks for the recommendation. I'll check it out. I need some more for the windshield reveal moldings.
 
#130 ·
I put the new bumper on today. It came pretty beat up and missing the hardware and half of the brackets so I ended up reconditioning my original brackets and hardware.





And then spraying the crap out of everything with Cosmoline once it was all bolted together.



 
#131 ·
Now that I have the tail gate looking a bit better on the Dakota, I wanted something that would offer some protection, similar to what the bed liner does. Or, more accurately, hide the crappy bedliner I sprayed on the tail gate

I bought a Rugged Liner [DD97TG] tail gate liner for it on Amazon. There isn't a lot out there in the way of tailgate liners for the Dakota. Really, this is pretty much it.

Whoever made this liner gave no ****s. Not a one. None of the edges are straight, or the same shape. It looks like they were cut out using a bread knife. The holes are drilled, wherever. Some more than once. Putting it on the gate, the top channel that sits over the tailgate didn't fit over the tailgate. Not even close. The Dakota tailgate has a curvature to the top of it. The liner, does not.

Now having said all that, I figured, "let's see what I can do with it". I spent some time with a heat gun and re-shaped the top side of it. I then masked off the edges in straight lines and used a belt sander to square them up. It took some time but honestly, it cleaned up nicely.

It came with several self-drilling screws that hold it to the tailgate.



It also uses one of the bolts for the latch handle to help hold it in place.



I used the self-drilling screws on the inner holes but the outer ones were drilled all wonky and they were too big for these screws, so I used some of the self-drilling torx bolts I had leftover from the Audi.



All-in-all, I'm pretty happy with it. I had to effectively finish the manufacturing process myself but that's fine.

 
#133 ·
I had some conduit strut channel laying out behind the workshop that I'd been thinking about dragging off for scrap but then today I got an idea to use it to make a sort of modular tie-down system for the truck. I cut it down to 72 1/2" to fit the length of the bed rails and bolted it to the box in five or six places along its length. I then made some tie-downs to fit inside the channel. I cut some 1 1/2" stock to the right length and welded a captured nut to the backside of it. I then made a second piece and threaded in an eyelet. When the eyelet is tightened down, it creates a clamping force holding the tie-down firmly in position. This lets me move it anywhere I like along the length of the channel.

I made three tie-downs. I think I want to make three more. I need to go get some more eyelets.







This gives me somewhere to hook my tie-downs when, say, I make a cardboard run to the recycling center, for instance.

 
#134 ·
That is very similar to the Nissan Frontier utili track. I had it in my frontier and ended up making extra tie downs like yours. They have factory made ones that should work with this track as well, but I always feared they would be easily stolen.

Truck is looking great!
 
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#135 ·
I have reverse lights!



These haven't worked since I've owned the truck. I did some testing a few days ago and found the switch was no longer working and also the connector and wiring to it were badly corroded.

I made a new connector and soldered it in, then replaced the switch. It took a lot longer than expected. The shift linkage and cooler line are both right in the way.



Now to figure out the cargo light.
 
#136 ·
Latest update on the Dodge, if anyone is still reading this.

The steering box I put in, what, less than two years ago, failed. It started pulling more and more to the right and eventually stopped centering all together. I replaced it with another rebuilt Saginaw box.



The paint I'd put all over everything, was total crap, and failed within 6 months, rusting most of the undercarriage. F*&K VHT paint. Seriously. So while I had it up in the air, working on the steering box, I cleaned all of the parts with a wire brush, then cleaned everything up with phosphoric acid, coated with SEM self-etch and a topcoat of Rustoleum Professional. Installed new shocks at the same time. I didn't care much for the Monroe Reflex shocks I installed previously. They were both too soft and too harsh, if you can imagine such a thing.

 
#137 ·
I've known about this rust since I bought the truck and I've ignored it since I know repairing it will suck balls. But I think I need to get on it as its getting worse. The back side is in even worse condition.





This is where the back half of the frame bolts to the front. It sits right in front of where the wheels splash road muck and its a riveted connection. I'm not sure what Dodge was thinking with putting a connection here. Maybe the shorter and longer wheelbase trucks use the same front frame section?

What do you guys think for repairing this? I'm thinking, remove the bed, remove the rear axle and leaf springs, remove the rear shock crossmember, then grind off the rivets, both sides, and separate the back frame from the front. Then cut out the rust, weld in patches, then weld on reinforcement panels on top of the patches. Then put the whole thing back together with bolts and a lot of Cosmoline.
 
#138 ·
Also, I think it's time to replace the trucks transmission. It's had a problem with slipping in second gear and leaks fluid out of either the input shaft seal or the torque converter oil seal. I thought about having a shop do it but quotes were $3k plus.
 
#139 ·
radare said:
I've known about this rust since I bought the truck and I've ignored it since I know repairing it will suck balls. But I think I need to get on it as its getting worse. The back side looks even worse.

This is where the back half of the frame bolts to the front. It sits right in front of where the wheels splash road muck and its a riveted connection. I'm not sure what Dodge was thinking with putting a connection here. Maybe the shorter and longer wheelbase trucks use the same front frame section?

What do you guys think for repairing this? I'm thinking, remove the bed, remove the rear axle and leaf springs, remove the rear shock crossmember, then grind off the rivets, both sides, and separate the back frame from the front. Then cut out the rust, weld in patches, then weld on reinforcement panels on top of the patches. Then put the whole thing back together with bolts and a lot of Cosmoline.
alot of trucks are built the same way...front section laminated and riveted to the back section...for different frame lengths... even the big highway trucks... after long years of salty cross country driving they rot out between the frame joints and cross-members....the aluminum frames corrode from the inside out, you dont notice it until the frame BREAKS ....the rivets are considered structural, but full welded joints are not... :roll: they can be corroded, but if all the rivets are there, its considered ''roadworthy'' :?

do some careful cross-section measurements, cut out the rust, install new bolts, then weld it up...it seems to me that your repairs are over the top as well, so it should not have any issues for the rest of its life!

i myself have had no luck with anything built by monroe, for shocks on my troopers....went to mush rather quickly, the ranchos were nice, but they failed as well.in a few short months... :evil:

''cardone'' rebuilt parts are junk. high failure rate on their rebuilt stuff. i swear its just repainted stuff with new seals installed :lol:

raptor liner is da bomb!! going to paint an entire car with that stuff...hides alot of my welding / bodywork imperfections... :oops:

truck looks 110% better than when you first got it. attention to detail pays off.
 
#140 ·
93trooperpooper said:
alot of trucks are built the same way...front section laminated and riveted to the back section...for different frame lengths... even the big highway trucks... after long years of salty cross country driving they rot out between the frame joints and cross-members....the aluminum frames corrode from the inside out, you dont notice it until the frame BREAKS ....the rivets are considered structural, but full welded joints are not... :roll: they can be corroded, but if all the rivets are there, its considered ''roadworthy'' :?

do some careful cross-section measurements, cut out the rust, install new bolts, then weld it up...it seems to me that your repairs are over the top as well, so it should not have any issues for the rest of its life!
That's a good point. Would you think bolts would be sufficient to replace those rivets. I'd likely drill them out slightly and run a larger bolt; maybe 9/16" or 5/8" if there's room, and probably hold them in there with some red Loctite.

I will probably weld in a patch the same thickness of the frame, then have a couple reinforcement panels water-cut from, maybe 1/4" cold rolled, and weld those on over top of the repair, each side, for extra strength. The passenger side doesn't look near as bad, but if I'm doing the driver side, it'll probably be done to match.

i myself have had no luck with anything built by monroe, for shocks on my troopers....went to mush rather quickly, the ranchos were nice, but they failed as well.in a few short months... :evil:
I offered them up for free on Craigslist and someone took them. Maybe they'll be better than whatever they are replacing. These KYB shocks are night-and-day better.
 
#141 ·
I bought an internet rebuilt transmission last night from a company in Florida. My truck has the 44RE in it and it has slipped in first and second from day 1. Hopefully it'll work out. I must admit, I'm not looking forward to the job.



I plan to replace the front exhaust pipe since I'll have it removed and mine has rusted pretty thin. I figure I'll want to do input and output seals in the transfer case, too. And probably the engine rear main seal. Maybe the transmission mount. The transmission comes with a new torque converter so I won't have to worry about that.

Is there anything else you guys can think of that I ought to replace while I have that behemoth of a transmission out from under the truck?
 
#142 ·
Wow! Sorry to hear about the problems with tis build. I always enjoyed your progress on this. If you go from rivets to bolts, you might consider "close tolerance" bolts (they may be AN or aviation). Dennis
 
#143 ·
DSUZU said:
Wow! Sorry to hear about the problems with tis build. I always enjoyed your progress on this. If you go from rivets to bolts, you might consider "close tolerance" bolts (they may be AN or aviation). Dennis
Thanks Dennis. It's nota big deal. I knew I was going to have to do something with the rust and transmission sooner or later. It'll give me the opportunity to make things right.

I'm not familiar with close tolerance fasteners but they seem like a good idea.
 
#144 ·
#145 ·
New intermediate shaft came in the mail so I installed it. I thought the old one might have some slop in it but when I got it out, no, no it didn't. The u-joints were pretty rusty, though, and didn't have much range of motion left..

The new shaft came unpainted. $300 for a part and they can't even paint the damned thing.



I wasn't feeling like painting today so I just coated the crap out of it with Cosmoline.



Installation took about 30 minutes but most of that was me walking back and forth to the shop to get tools.





The truck rides and steers pretty good now. I think the new box, pitman arm and intermediate shaft did some good. I need to get it back in for an alignment in the next few weeks.
 
#146 ·
radare said:
Latest update on the Dodge, if anyone is still reading this.
FWIW, I read all your posts. I've learned a lot from them and have been emboldened to try some things I wouldn't have considered before. Also, things I would have tried have turned out better with your tips and advice that I wouldn't have thought of on my own!
 
#147 ·
txamigo said:
radare said:
Latest update on the Dodge, if anyone is still reading this.
FWIW, I read all your posts. I've learned a lot from them and have been emboldened to try some things I wouldn't have considered before. Also, things I would have tried have turned out better with your tips and advice that I wouldn't have thought of on my own!
That's awesome. Thank you!
 
#149 ·
I dunno, it looks like your Dodge has been infected by the Isuzu :D. Dennis
 
#151 ·
The Dodge has been wearing out the road between my house and the local big-box hardware store. I decided last night, to give it some much needed attention. I spent a few hours cleaning up all the rust spots with phosphoric acid and coating them with touch-up paint. I have that paint in a spray can so I spray it into a baby food jar and then let it thicken up a bit and apply it using an artists brush. Works pretty well. For the larger area's, I brush on a layer of 5-min epoxy to offer some additional protection and help hide it. It's the closest to a 2k paint I have access to right now.



I have a real desire to tackle the driver-side rear cab corner in the next couple of weekends. It was torn clean through when i bought the truck and really rusty on the inside. I pushed out the dent using my Porta Power back when I did the other corner but I found that it was too rusty to properly repair. The metal was just too thin and backside access poor.





Its gotten worse over the last couple of years. More rusty. I have Gorilla tape over it right now to try and keep water out.





I have a pattern corner and a new Hobart I really want to try out. Problem is, I need to remove that box. By myself. Any suggestions on how to do that?
 
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