Greetings all, Chris from Tennessee here.
I just joined the forum a couple weeks ago and wanted to introduce my project truck. I needed a truck around the house and I cringe every time I take the BMW out storm chasing so I figured it was time to find an old beater that was in sound mechanical shape to fit the bill. My brother in law (the good kind, not the kind that drives you insane ) just retired his parts chaser truck when he bought a Subaru and it seemed to be a good platform for what I needed. It's a '96 Dakota Sport extended cab with the 5.2 Magnum, 5 speed with the 3.90 posi. Great bed-liner too. Runs and shifts like new but has a very rough body. He got it this way 6 years ago, kept the mechanicals very well maintained, and it has been trouble free. The gray interior isn't bad either except for a few small dash cracks and the headliner droops. Great stereo as well. Anyway, to make a long story short, $450 dollars later and I drove it home. The right side has been banged up fairly well and the driver's fender has been replaced but nothing that a little dent pulling and bondo can't fix. The paint is rough as well and the front bumper is a nice color of oxidized steel but straight and solid. Some dimples in the hood as well but no biggie. The tailgate is jacked up too so that is on the repair list. I used to do body work many moons ago so none of this will present a problem. The worst of it is that the owner before him did hit a curb with the passenger front wheel and that blew out the upper control arm bushing on that side. All of the running gear seems to be straight but that wheel eats tires on the inside with a vengeance as you can well imagine. Also, no biggie.
Back to the project, since I'm going to storm chase it it I'll fix the body work, shoot some generic black paint and probably do the 2 inch body lift for some slightly bigger all-terrain tires. Then I'll mount amber lights in the back glass, visor area and behind the grill. Lastly, I'll mount my cameras, laptop computer for radar and install my ham radios and a cellphone mount of some sort.
Should be a fun little project. If there are any comments, especially from any storm chasers, I'd love to hear them. I've attached some photos....so try not to cringe too much.

Thanks for the great forum!
Chris

 

Sounds like it will be a fun project and even more fun chasing with it. Depending on what and how you chase the storms you may want to invest in some HD bumbers and beef up the doors fenders and the glass.

 

Thanks for the reply! Those are very good ideas. Here in my area we don't have all of the wide open country that you see on the TV shows shot in Kansas and such. Everything is trees and curves so we don't get the luxury of seeing a storm come from miles and are much more susceptible to flying debris. That gives lots of "uh oh....it's time to get out of here" moments because the storms sometimes sneak up on you....even with good radar running. Most of our storm lines happen at night as well.

Thanks for the comment!