I have to replace the grille and headlight surrounds on my 96, thanks to my wife. I have a side job sitting here (I don't do very many of those any more) of a Ford F150 here that I have to swap out the transmission on. It starts and runs but won't move under its own power. (typical for Ford anyways, right?) . so I told my wife to start it up so she could steer. I put a strap from the front crossmember of my 96 4X4 to the back of the Ford, I had to pull it backwards to move it over to the other side of the driveway, so I could get into the "open" stall in the garage. I pulled it back and backed out to the RIGHT. What does she do? She steered the Ford to the LEFT instead of following me around. so I wound up pulling the right rear corner of the Ford's bumper into the driver side of my Dakota. and all I could hear was the CRUNCH of breaking plastic.

I would like to find the non aero setup, with the glass sealed beam style headlights. Anyone got anything laying around?

 

Don
Best I can do is get you the headlight buckets and mountings. I can't do anything about headlight doors right now, those are hard to find for the sealed beam trucks. It also depends on whether you want painted or chrome plated headlamp doors; they made both. Personally, I like the simplicity of the painted front, which is what I'm going to do once when my 165mm headlights get ordered. The buckets and mounts can be gotten from any gen1 Dak though so those are less difficult to find.

Also bear in mind that the reflectors and park turn lamps for the sealed beams are different from those on the aero front end. I noticed that the sizes are slightly different and the part numbers too are different.

I did notice someone is selling some NOS ones on Ebay but those are kinda spendy IMO.

I got lucky and found a basically intact front sealed beam setup on a 93. It's not perfect but it's certainly close and where the grille is missing bars I'm just going to remove them all and substitute some kind of mesh behind it.





Steve

 

 

yup. a 96 is where the setup I am looking for is headed, if I find it....

 

so then the headlight buckets and such from a 90 or older are the same? If that's the case the yard by me has a few 88s and 89s. I don't think so but could I put an 87-90 grille on the 96? I had an 89 once, my 1st Dakota was a 90. I liked the front grille design/ looks better on those (back when Dakotas had 5 lug wheels-- nother story)

 

The buckets and the mounting screws / clips / springs etc are the same for all years of sealed beam headlights, the trim and grilles are not. You will need to find headlight trims from 91-95 sealed beam truck. I got some of my mounting clips / screws from a 1989 truck

The grille shape / design is the same for all 91-95 trucks, but headlight doors are different for sealed beams. The only way to use the complete early front grille setup is to get the radiator support for the early truck along with everything else that works with that, grille / headlight doors / bumper etc. Then it would work.

Steve

 

Good news is, the trim is available still from places like RockAuto. https://www.rockauto.com/en/catalog/...dlamp+door,816

Also, the Mopar part #s are in the parts listings here in the FAQ; you can always toss them to Google (use "1234567 Mopar" to keep you from getting phone numbers etc. instead)

RwP